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OPUL9VR 
I  STORY 

OF 

HEWsR 


PRESENTED   BY 

BUFFALO  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY 

DELAWARE  PARK 
BUFFALO,  N.  Y. 


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POPULAR 
HISTORY  OF  THE  WAR 


BY 
MERTON  M.  WILNER 

ASSISTANT  EDITOR,  BUFFALO  EXPRESS 

(MEMBER  BUFFALO  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY) 


COPYRIGHT,  1919,  BY 

THE  MATTHEWS-NORTHRUP  WORKS 

BUFFALO  ••  CLEVELAND  ••  NEW  YORK 


CHRONOLOGY 


1914 

June  28 — Archduke  Francis  Ferdinand  of  Aus- 
tria-Hungary assassinated. 

July  23 — Austrian  ultimatum  to  Serbia. 

July  28 — Austria  declares  war  on  Serbia. 

July  29 — Russia  calls  reserves  to  colors. 

July  29 — Bombardment  of  Belgrade. 

Aug.     1 — Germany  declares  war  on  Russia. 

Aug.     1 — France  orders  mobilization. 

Aug.    2 — Germans  enter  Luxemburg. 

Aug.    2 — German  ultimatum  to  Belgium. 

Aug.    2 — First  skirmish  between  Germans  and 
Russians. 

Aug.    2 — First  skirmish  between  Germans  and 
French. 

Aug.    3 — Germany  declares  war  on  France. 

Aug.    4 — Germany  invades  Belgium. 

Aug.    4 — Great  Britain  declares  war  on  Ger- 
many. 

Aug.    4 — Italy  proclaims  neutrality. 

Aug.     5 — Germans  attack  Liege. 

Aug.     6 — Austria  declares  war  on  Russia. 

Aug.    8 — Montenegro  declares  war  on  Austria. 

Aug.    7-8-^-French  invade  Alsace  (taking  Alt- 
kirch  and  Mulhausen). 

Aug.    9 — Germans  take  Liege. 

Aug.    9 — Serbia  declares  war  on  Germany. 

Aug.  10 — France  declares  war  on  Austria. 

Aug.  11 — Germans  enter  France  through  Lux- 
emburg. 

Aug.  11 — French  driven  from  Mulhausen. 

Aug.  12 — Great  Britain  declares  war  on  Aus- 
tria-Hungary. 

Aug.  12 — Montenegro    declares    war    on    Ger- 
many. 

Aug.  16-23 — Serbians  defeat  Austrians  in  bat- 
tle of  the  Jadar. 

Aug.  19 — Belgians  defeated  before  Lou  vain. 

Aug.  20 — Germans  enter  Brussels. 

Aug.  20-21 — Russians     defeat     Germans     at 
Gumbinnen. 

Aug.  22 — Germans  take  Namur. 

Aug.  23 — British  and  French  defeated  at  Mons 
and  Charleroi. 

Aug.  23 — Japan  declares  war  on  Germany. 

Aug.  23-Sept.    6 — Retreat    of    British-French, 
Mons  to  the  Marne. 

Aug.  23-26 — Austrians  defeat  Russians  at  bat- 
tle of  Krasnik. 

Aug.  25 — Austria  declares  war  on  Japan. 

Aug.  26 — Germans  surrender  Togoland. 

Aug.  26 — First  bomb  .dropped  frcjn  £epp«Kn  on 
Antwerp. 

Aug.  27 — Surrender  df  Lor.*; 

Aug.  27 — Burning  of  Louvain. 

Aug.  28— Naval  battle  off  Helgoland. 
•  Aug.  28 — Austria  declares  war  on  Belgium. 

Aug.  29-31 — Germans  defeat  Russians  in  battle 
of  Tannenberg. 

Sept.    2 — Japanese  land  on  Shantung  peninsula. 

Sept.    2 — Russians  take  Lemberg. 

Sept.    4-8 — Russians  defeat  Austrians,   Rawa- 
ruska  and  Tomaszov. 

Sept.    5-10 — Battle  of  the  Marne. 

Sept.    9 — Surrender  of  Maubeuge. 
'  Sept.    7-13 — Germans  defeat  Russians  in  East 
Prussia. 

Sept.  12-15 — Battle  of  the  Aisne. 

S  -pt.  13 — French  retake  Reims. 

Sept.  16 — Germans  bombard  Reims  cathedral. 

Sept.  22— British  cruisers  "Aboukir,"  "Cressy", 
and  "Hogue"  sunk  by  submarine. 

Sept.  26— Germans  take  St.  Mihiel. 

Sept.  27-Oct.  3— Battle    of    the    Niemen    and 
Augustowa. 


Sept.  29-30— Battle  of  Tarnow. 

Oct.     9 — Capture  of  Antwerp. 

Oct.   10-12— Battle  of  Lille. 

Oct.   12 — Germans-  capture  Ghent. 

Oct.    13— Germans  take  Lille. 

Oct.    14 — Germans  take  Bruges. 

Oct.    15 — Germans  take  Ostend. 
,X>ct.   15-23— Battle  of  Warsaw. 

Oct.    17-Nov.  1 1— Battle  of  Ypres  and  the  Yser. 

Oct.    18 — Battle  of  destroyers  off  Dutch  coast. 

Oct.   26 — Italians  occupy  Avlona,  Albania. 
s  Oct.  29 — Turkey     begins     hostilities     against 
Russia. 

Nov.    1— Sea  battle  off  Coronel,  Chili. 

Nov.    4 — British    attack    on    Tanga,    German 
East  Africa,  defeated. 

Nov.    5 — Great  Britain  declares  war  on  Turkey. 

Nov.    7 — Japanese  take  Tsing-tau. 

Nov.    9 — German  cruiser  "Emden"  destroyed. 

Nov.  16 — German  success  on  Plock-Warthe  line, 
Poland. 

Nov.  19-28— Battle  of  Lodz. 
="  Nov.  23 — Portugal  joins  the  Allies. 

Dec.    2 — Austrians  take  Belgrade. 

Dec.     6 — Germans  take  Lodz. 

Dec.     6-14— Serbians  defeat  Austrians;   retake 

Belgrade. 

"  Dec.  8— Naval  battle  off  Falkland  Islands. 
HDec.  9 — British  take  Kurna,  Mesopotamia. 
''Dec.  16 — German  raidon  Scarborough,  England. 

Dec.  17 — British    proclaim    protectorate    over 
Egypt. 

Dec.  18 — Germans  take  Lowicz. 

Dec.  25 — British  sea  and  air  raid  on  Cuxhaven. 

1915 
"Jan.  3-4 — Turkish  defeat  in  the  Caucasus. 

Jan.     3— French  take  Steinbach. 

Jan.    14 — French  defeated  at  Soissons. 

Jan.    17 — Russians  take  Kirlibaba  pass. 
-Jan.  24 — Naval  battle  off  Dogger  Bank. 

Feb.     4 — Germans  proclaim  submarine  block- 
ade of  British  Isles  to  begin  February 
18th. 
~Teb.  2-3— Turks  attack  Suez  Canal. 

Feb.  10 — President    Wilson's   strict   accounta- 
bility note  to  Germany. 

Feb.  1 1-12 — Russians  driven  from  East  Prussia. 

Ft  b.   16— French  take  Perthes. 

Feb.  18 — Austrians  take  Czernowitz. 

1 9 — Naval  attack  on  Dardanelles  forts. 

Feb.  25 — Second  naval  attack  on  Dardanelles. 

Feb.  US-Mar.  1 — Russian  offensive  in  Northern 
Poland. 

Mar.  10 — German  cruiser  "Prinz  Eitel  Fried- 
rich  "  enters  Newport  News. 

Mar.  10-12— Battle  of  Neuve  Chapelle. 

Mar.  18 — Third  naval  attack   on   Dardanelles 
forts  repulsed;  three  battleships  sunk. 

Mar.  20 — Russians  take  Memel. 

Mar.  22 — Surrender  of  Przemysl  and  Austrian 
army. 

Mar.  28 — Passenger  steamer  "Falaba"  sunk  by 
submarine;  111  lost. 

'Apr.     4 — Russians  through  the  Beskid  range, 
Hungary. 

Apr.  4-9 — Battle  of  Les  Eparges 

Apr.  11 — German     cruiser       Kronprinz 
helm  "  enters  Hampton  Roads. 

Apr.  22-24— Second     battle     of     Ypres     (St. 
Julien);    first  use  of  gas. 

Apr.  23 — British  victory  at  Shaiba,   Mesopo- 
tamia. 

Apr.  25 — British  and  French  land  on  Gallipoli. 

Apr.  30 — Germans   advance   into   Kovno  and 
Courland. 


Wil- 


IK- 


May    2 — American    ship    "Gulflight"    torpe- 
doed. 

May    2 — Germans  take  Shavli. 

May    2 — Battle    of    Gorlice;     Russian    front 

broken  in  Galicia. 
*^May    7 — "Lusitania"  sunk. 

May  11 — French    take    Carency    and    Notre 
Dame  de  Lorette. 

May  13 — President  Wilson  protests  Lusitania 
sinking. 

May  15-17— Battle  of  the  San. 

May  16 — Four  Zeppelins  destroyed  in  air  raid 
on  England. 

May  16 — Battle  of  Festuoert. 

May  23 — Italy  declares  war  on  Austria. 

June    2 — Germans  retake  Przemysl. 

June    9 — Second  American  note  on  submarine 
sinkings. 

June  20 — German  victory  at  Rawaruska. 

June  22 — Austrians  retake  Lemberg. 

June  28 — United  States  protests  sinking  of  the 
"Frye." 

July  2-4— Battle  at  Krasnik. 

"^July     9 — German    Southwest    Africa    surren- 
dered to  Anglo-Boer  force. 
-  July  14 — German  offensive  in  North  Poland. 

July  23 — Third  American  note  on  submarines. 

Aug.    4 — Russians  evacuate  Warsaw. 

Aug.  10 — Allied  attack  in  Gallipoli  fails. 

Aug.  15 — American  reply  to  Austria-Hungary 
protest  on  arms  traffic. 

Aug.  18 — Germans  take  Kovno. 

Aug.  19 — "Arabic"  torpedoed. 

Aug.  19 — Germans  take  Novogeorgievsk. 

Aug.  21 — Italy  declares  war  on  Turkey. 
.-.Aug.  26 — Germans  take  Byalystok  and  Brest- 
Litovsk. 

Sept.    1 — Austrians  take  Lutsk. 

Sept.    2 — Germans  take  Grodno. 

Sept.    8 — Grand  Duke  Nicholas  removed  from 
command  of  Russia  armies. 

Sept.    9 — American  note  on  "Arabic"  sinking. 

Sept.    9 — United    States    demands    recall    of 
Austrian  Ambassador  Dumba. 

Sept.    9 — Russian  success  on  Sereth  River. 

Sept.    9 — Austrians  take  Dubno. 
- '  Sept.  18 — Germans  take  Vilna. 

Sept.  22 — Bulgaria  orders  mobilization. 

Sept.  25 — Battle  of  Loos. 

Sept.  25 — Battle  of  Champagne. 

Oct.     3 — Russian  ultimatum  to  Bulgaria. 

Oct.     5 — German  reply  in  "Arabic"  case  con- 
cedes American  points. 

Oct.     6 — German-Austrian    offensive    against 

Serbia;  Danube  crossed. 
»  Oct.     8 — Belgrade  taken. 
'  Oct.   12 — Bulgarians  invade  Serbia. 

Oct.   13 — Execution  of  Edith  Cavell. 

Oct.   14 — Bulgaria  declares  war  on  Serbia. 

Oct.   15 — Britain  declares  war  on  Bulgaria. 
^X)ct.  22 — Greece  refuses  offer  of  Great  Britain 
to  cede  Cyprus. 

Oct.  24 — Bulgarians  take  Uskup. 

Oct.  28 — Viviani  resigns  as  premier  of  France. 

Oct.  29 — Italian  attack  on  the  Isonzo. 

Nov.    5 — Bulgarians  take  Nish. 

Nov.    9 — Italian  liner  "Ancona"  torpedoed. 

Nov.  22-24 — Battle  Ctesiphon,  Mesopotamia. 

Nov.  30 — Second  Italian  attack  on  the  Isonzo. 

Dec.    3— United    States    demands    recall    of 
Boy-Ed  and  Von  Papen. 

Dec.  3-12 — Anglo-French  troops  defeated   on 
Vardar. 

Dec.     5 — Bulgarians  take  Monastir. 

Dec.     6 — British  retreat  to  Kut-el-Amara. 

Dec.  11 — United    States    protests    "Ancona" 
sinking. 


Dec.  15 — Sir  Douglas  Haig  succeeds  Sir  John 

French    in    command    of    British. 
Dec.  20 — British  withdraw  from  Gallipoli. 
Dec.  21-22— French     take      Hartmans  - Weiler- 

kopf. 
Dec.  27— British  defeat  Arab  revolt  in  West 

Egypt. 
Dec.  30 — Liner  "Persia"  sunk. 

1916 

Jan.   13 — Austrians  take  Cettinje,  Montenegro. 
Uan.   16 — Russians   begin    drive    in    Caucasus. 
Jan.   19 — King  Nicholas  of  Montenegro  flees. 
Feb.  16 — Russians  take  Erzeroum. 
-Feb.  18 — Allied  conquest  of  Cameroons. 
Feb.  20 — German  offensive  at  Verdun  begun. 
Feb.  26 — Germans  take  Fort  Douaumont. 
Mar.  15 — Von  Tirpitz  retires  as  head  of  German 

navy. 

Mar.  24 — Steamer  "Sussex"  torpedoed. 
Mar.  26 — British  naval  air  raid  on  Jutland. 
Mar.  31 — Russian    hospital    ship    "Portugal" 

sunk. 

Apr.  18 — Russians  take  Trebizond. 
Apr.  19 — President  Wilson's  "Sussex"  note. 
Apr.  21 — Arrest  of  Sir  Roger  Casement. 
—Apr.  24 — Irish  rebellion. 
Apr.  28 — General  Townshend  surrenders  Brit- 
ish force  at  Kut-el-Amara. 
May    1 — Dublin  rebels  surrender. 
May    5 — Germany  promises  to  stop  sinkings 

without  warning. 

May  15 — Austrian  drive  in  Trentiiuo  begun. 
May  23 — British  Commons  adopt  conscription. 
May  27 — Austrians  take  Asiago. 
May  31 — Naval  battle  off  Jutland. 
June  1-7 — German  drive  on  Douaumont- Vaux. 
June  2-16 — Third  battle  of  Ypres. 
June  4-Aug.  15 — Russian   offensive   Pripet  to 

Roumania. 
June    6 — Lord  Kitchener  drowned  by  sinking 

of  cruiser  "Hampshire." 
June    6 — Russians  take  Lutsk. 
June    7 — Germans  take  Fort  Vaux. 
June  10 — Russians  take  Dubno. 
June  13 — Shereef     of     Mecca     revolts     from 

Turkey. 

June  17 — Russians  take  Czernowitz. 
June  25 — Russians  complete  conquest  of  Bu- 

kowina. 

July     1 — First  battle  of  the  Somme  begun. 
July     9 — German    merchant    submarine 

"Deutschland"  arrives  at  Baltimore. 
July  11 — British  take  Contalmaison. 
July  26 — Russians  take  Erzingam. 
Aug.    4 — Roger  Casement  executed. 
Aug.    4 — French  retake  Fleury  and  Thiaumont. 
Aug.    9 — Italians  take  Gorizia. 
Aug.  11 — Italians  take  Carso  plateau. 
—Aug.  18 — Bulgarians  invade  Northern  Greece. 
-Aug.  27 — Italy  declares  war  on  Germany. 
Aug.  27 — Bulgarians    enter    Greek  Macedonia 
-?Aug.  28 — Roumania  declares  war  on  Austria. 
Aug.  29 — Hindenburg  becomes  German  chief  of 

staff. 

Aug.  30 — Roumanians  take  Kronstadt. 
Sept.    2 — Roumanians  take  Hermanstadt. 
Sept.  2-8 — Bulgarians    defeat    Roumanians   in 

Dodrudja. 

Sept.    6 — Russian  victory  near  Halicz. 
Sept.  15 — First  use  of  British  tanks. 
Sept.  19-23 — Roumanians  defeated  at  Vulcan 

Pass. 

Sept.  26 — British  take  Combles  and  Thiepval. 
Oct.     7 — German    submarine    "U-53"    enters 

Newport. 

t)ct.     8 — "U-53"   sinks  six  ships  off   Massa- 
chusetts coast. 


Oct.   11-13 — Italian  advance  on  the  Carso. 
Oct.   17 — Allies  take  over  Greek  fleet  and  land 

forces. 

Oct.  23 — Roumanians  lose  Canstansa. 
Oct.  24 — French  retake  Fort  Douaumont. 
Nov.    1 — Merchant  submarine  "  Deutschland  " 

arrives  at  New  London. 
Nov.  15-17 — Roumanians  defeated  in  battle  of 

Tirgu-Juil. 

Nov.  19 — Serbians  take  Monastir. 
Nov.  21 — Emperor  Francis  Joseph  dies;    Carl 

succeed. 

Nov.  25 — French  retake  Fort  Vaux. 
Nov.  29 — Sir  David  Beatty  succeeds  Sir  John 

Jellicoe  in  command  of  British  fleet. 
^7  Dec.    2 — Entente  troops  move  on  Athens. 
Dec.    3 — Roumanians    beaten    in    battle    of 

Argechu. 

Dec.     5 — Asquith  resigns  as  premier  of  Britain. 
Dec.    6 — Teutonic  allies  take  Bucharest. 
Dec.  10 — Lloyd  George  forms  ministry. 
Dec.  11 — Nivelle  succeeds  Joffre  in  command 

of  French. 
Dec.  15 — Brilliant    French    victory    north    of 

Verdun. 

1917 

Jan.   11 — Entente  reply  to  President  on  aims. 
Jan.   11 — British  take  Rafa,  Sinai  Peninsula. 
Jan.  31 — Germany  announces  resumption   of 

submarine  ruthlessness  after  Feb.  1st. 
Feb.     3 — President    announces    severance    of 

diplomatic  relation  with  Germany. 
Feb.3-5 — British  advance  on  the  Ancre. 
Feb.     7 — "California"  torpedoed. 
Feb.  24 — German  withdrawal  on  Somme  de- 
tected. 

Feb.  24— British  take  Sanna-y-Yat. 
Feb.  25 — "Laconia"  sunk. 

•  Feb.  25 — British  take  Kut-el-Amara. 

Feb.  26 — President    asks    authority    to    arm 

merchant  ships. 

Feb.  28 — Zimmermann's     Mexican     plot     ex- 
posed. 
Mar.    9 — President  orders  arming  of  merchant 

ships. 

Mar.  9-11 — Revolutionary  riots  in  Petrograd. 
Mar.  11— British  take  Bagdad. 
Mar.  15 — Czar    Nicholas    abdicates;     republic 

organized,  Lvoff  premier. 
Mar.  17 — British  take  Bapaume  and  Chaulnes; 

French  Roye  and  Lassigny. 
Mar.  17 — Briand  cabinet  resigns. 
Mar.  18 — Peronne  and  Nesle  Uken. 
Mar.  19 — French  take  Chauny  and  Ham. 
Mar.  24 — French  before  LeFere. 
Mar.  31 — British  before  Hindenburg  line. 
Apr.     1 — French  take  Vauxaillon. 
Apr.     2 — American    armed    steamer    "Aztec" 

torpedoed,  11  drowned. 
Apr.     2 — President  asks  Congress  to  declare 

war. 

Apr.     4 — Senate  passes  war  resolution. 
Apr.     4 — Germans    defeat    Russians    on     the 

Stokhod. 
Apr.     6 — House  passes  war  resolution. 

-  Apr.     6 — President  proclaims  war. 
Apr.     7 — Cuba  declares  war. 

Apr.  9 — Austria-Hungary  severs  diplomatic 
relations  with  United  States. 

Apr.     9— British  take  Vimy  ridge. 

Apr.  10 — Brazil  severs  diplomatic  relations 
with  Germany. 

Apr.  14 — British  take  Lievin. 

Apr.  14-17 — Congress  passes  $7,000,000,000 
war  bond  bill. 

Apr.  16 — Nivelle's  offensive  begun. 

Apr.  18— French  take  Vailly. 


Apr.  19 — French  take  Fort  de  Conde. 

Apr.  22 — Hospital     ships     "Lanfranc"     and 

"Donegal"  torpedoed. 

Apr.  28 — Congress  passes  conscription  bill. 
May    4 — French  take  Craonne. 
May    4 — First  squadron  U.  S.  navy  reaches 

England. 

May    5 — French  take  Chemin  des  Dames. 
•*May    7 — Greek  Venizelist  troops  first  go  into 

action  beside  Allies. 

May  12-31 — Italian  offensive  on  the  Isonzo. 
May  14 — President    calls    for    forty-four    new 

regiments  of  regulars. 

May  29 — Hospital  ship  "Dover  Castle"  torpe- 
doed. 
June    5 — First    conscription    registration    day 

in  United  States. 

June    7 — British  take  Messines  ridge. 
June    9 — President's  note  to   Russia  on   war 

aims. 

-  June  12 — King    Constantine   of    Greece   abdi- 
cates. 

June  12 — Congress  passes  espionage  act. 
June  13 — General  Pershing  arrives  in  France. 
June  13 — Root  commission  reaches  Petrograd. 
June  26-27 — First    United    States    contingent 

lands  in  France. 

June  28 — Brazil  revokes  neutrality. 
July     1 — Russians  begin  offensive  in  Galicia. 
*July     2 — Greece  declares  war. 
July     9 — Mobilization      of      national      guard 

ordered. 

July  8-10 — Russians  win  battle  of  Dolina. 
July  11 — British  reverse  on  Yser. 
July  14-21— Congress  passes  $640,000,000  avi- 
ation bill. 
July  19 — German      counter-offensive      breaks 

Russian  front  in  Galicia. 
July  20 — First  draft  drawing. 
July  22 — Kerensky  succeeds  Lvoff  as  premier 

of  Russia. 
July  22 — Russian    soldiers    in    Galicia    refuse 

obedience  and  start  flight. 
July  23 — Germans  take  Tarnapol. 
July  23 — Council    of    workmen    and    soldiers 

makes  Kerensky  dictator. 
July  25 — Roumanians  take  offensive. 
July  31— Allies  begin  Fourth  battle  of  Ypree. 
Aug.    2 — Brusiloff  and  Dimitrieff  resign. 
Aug.     7 — Liberia  declares  war  on  Germany. 
Aug.  10-11 — Second  British  advance  at  Ypres. 
Aug.  14 — Pope  makes  peace  proposal. 
Aug.  14 — China  declares  war  on  Germany  and 

Austria-Hungary. 
Aug.  15-16 — Third  advance  at  Ypres;    Lange- 

marck  and  Hill  70  taken. 
Aug.  18-24 — Italian  offensive  on  Isonzo;    take 

Bainsizza  plateau,  Monte  Santo  and 

Monte  San  Gabriele. 
Aug.  19-20 — Fourth  advance  at  Ypres. 
Aug.  20 — French  take  Dead  Man's  hill. 
Aug.  24— French  take  Hill  304,  Verdun. 
Aug.  25-27 — Moscow  conference. 
Aug.  28 — President  rejects  Pope's  peace  plan. 
Sept.    3 — Germans  take  Riga. 
Sept.    8 — Luxburg  sink-without-trace  dispatch 

disclosed. 

Sept.    8 — Korniloff  rebels  against  Kerensky. 
Sept.  15 — Korniloff  surrenders  to  Alexieff. 
Sept.  20 — Fifth  British  advance  at  Ypres. 
Sept.  22 — Germans  take  Jacobstadt. 
Sept.  26 — Sixth  advance  at  Ypres;    take  Zon- 

nebeke  and  Polygon  wood. 
Oct.     4 — Seventh  advance  at  Ypres;    Poelca- 

pelle  taken. 

Oct.     9 — Eighth  advance  at  Ypres. 
Oct.  12— Ninth  advance  at  Ypres. 


Oct.  13 — Germans  land  on  Oesel  Island,  Baltic 
Sea. 

Oct.  18 — Battle  of  German  and  Russian  fleets 
in  Moon  Sound. 

Oct.  20 — Five  Zeppelins  destroyed  in  raid  on 
London. 

Oct.  22 — Tenth  advance  at  Ypres. 

Oct.   23 — French  take  Fort  de  Malmaison. 

Oct.  21-23— Battle  of  Caporetta;  Italian 
front  broken. 

Oct.  25 — French  drive  Germans  across  the 
Ailette. 

Oct.  26 — Brazil  declares  war  on  Germany. 

Oct.  26-30 — Eleventh  advance  at  Ypres. 

Oct.  28 — Gorizia  retaken  by  Austrians;  Bain- 
sizza  and  Carso  lost. 

Oct.  30 — Austrians  take  Udine. 

Oct.  31 — British  take  Beersheba,  Palestine. 

Nov.  3 — First  American  trench  fight  on 
Rhine-Marne  canal. 

Nov.    6 — British  take  Passchendaele. 

Nov.    6 — British  take  Gaza. 

Nov.    7 — Kerensky  overthrown  by  Bolsheviki. 

Nov.    8 — Italians  defeated  on  the  Tagliamentp. 

Nov.  9 — General  Diaz  succeeds  Cadorna  in 
command  of  Italians. 

Nov.  10 — British  advance  on  Passchendaele 
ridge. 

Nov.  10 — British  take  Askalon. 

Nov.  16-17 — Kerensky  forces  defeated  by  Bol- 
sheviki. 

Nov.  17 — British  gain  on  Passchendaele  ridge. 

Nov.  18-19— Battle  of  the  Piave;  Italians  hold. 

Nov.  18 — British  take  Jaffa. 

Nov.  19 — Death  of  General  Cyril  Maude. 

Nov.  20 — Battle  of  Monte  Tomba. 

Nov.  20 — British  attack  at  Cambrai. 

Nov.  30-Dec.  7 — German     counter-attack     at 
^         Cambrai. 

Dec.  7 — United  States  declares  war  on  Aus- 
tria-Hungary. 

Dec.    7 — Roumania  agrees  to  armistice. 

Dec.  8 — Trotzky  announces  suspension  of 
hostilities. 

Dec.  8 — U.  S.  destroyer  "Jacob  Jones"  tor- 
pedoed. 

Dec.  10 — British  take  Jerusalem. 

Dec.  14 — Germans  and  Bolsheviki  signarmiatice. 

Dec.  19-21 — Battle  of  Monte  Asolone. 

Dec.  28 — Provisional  peace  agreement  between 
Bolsheviki  and  Germans. 
1918 

Jan.  8 — President's  speech  stating  fourteen 
peace  articles. 

Jan.  20 — Bolsheviki  dissolve  Constituent  As- 
sembly. 

Jan.  20 — Breslau  sunk  in  naval  battle  off  Dar- 
danelles. 

Jan.  24-28 — Italian  success  on  Asiago  plateau. 

Feb.  6 — "Tuscania  "torpedoed;  212  Ameri- 
can soldiers  lost. 

Feb.  9 — Ukraine  government  signs  separate 
peace. 

Feb.  11 — Bolsheviki  declare  end  of  the  war. 

Feb.  16 — Sir  Henry  Hughes  Wilson  succeeds 
Sir  William  Robertson  as  British 
chief  of  staff. 

Feb.  17 — Germans  announce  end  of  armistice 
with  Bolsheviki. 

Feb.  18 — Germans  advance  across  the  Dvina. 

Feb.  19 — Germans  take  Dvinsk  and  Lutsk. 

Feb.  20 — Germans  enter  Esthonia. 

Feb.  22 — British  take  Jericho. 

Feb.  23 — New  German  terms  to  Bolsheviki. 

Feb.  25 — Germans  take  Reval  and  Pskov. 

Feb.  27— Hospital  ship  "Glenart  Castle"  tor- 
pedoed; 164  lost. 


Mar.    1 — Austrian  armies  enter  Ukraine. 

Mar.    3 — Bolsheviki  agree  to  German  terms. 

Mar.    7 — Peace  treaty  with  Roumania. 

Mar.  10 — Germans  land  in  Finland. 

Mar.  13 — Austrians  take  Odessa. 

Mar.  21 — German  drive  on  Cambrai-Saint 
Quentin  front  begins. 

Mar.  23— Germans  first  shell  Paris  with  76- 
mile  gun. 

Mar.  24 — Germans  take  Ham  and  Chauny. 

Mar.  25 — Germans  take  Bapaume. 

Mar.  26 — Germans  take  Noyon  and  Roye. 

Mar.  27 — Germans  take  Albert. 

Mar.  28 — Germans  take  Montdidier. 

Mar.  28 — Germans  repulsed  before  Arras. 

Mar.  28 — British  defeat  Turks  at  Hit,  Meso- 
potamia. 

Mar.  29 — Foch  appointed  Allied  generalissimo. 

Mar.  30 — Germans  take  Grivesnes,  Moreuil 
and  Demuin. 

Mar.  31 — Moreuil  and  Demuin  retaken. 

Apr.     5 — Japanese  land  at  Vladivostok. 

Apr.  6-7 — Germans  advance  from  Chauny; 
take  Folembray  and  Pierremonde. 

Apr.     9 — German  drive  at  Armentieres  begun. 

Apr.  11 — Germans  take  Armentieres. 

Apr.  12 — Haig's  back-to-wall  order. 

Apr.  14 — British  and  French  land  on  Kola 
Peninsula. 

Apr.  16 — Germans  take  Bailleul  and  Wytsdh- 
aete;  British  retire  from  Passchen- 
daele. 

Apr.  17 — French  reinforce  British  on  the  Lys. 

Apr.  20 — Americans  repulse  German  raid  at 
Seicheprey. 

Apr.  23 — British  naval  raid  on  Zeebrugge  and 
Qstend. 

Apr.  25-26 — Germans  take  Mont  Kemmel. 

Apr.  26 — Americans  in  line  on  Picardy  front. 

Apr.  27-28 — Battle  at  Locre  and  Voormezeele; 
British  again  withdraw  before  Ypres. 

Apr.  29 — General  German  attack  on  Lys 
sector  repulsed. 

May  10 — Second  British  naval  raid  on  Ostend. 

May  16 — Italian  naval  raid  on  Pola  sinks 
battleship. 

May  27 — Germans  take  Chemin  des  Dames. 

May  28 — Germans  advance  to  the  Vesle. 

May  28 — First  American  offensive;  take  Can- 
tigny. 

May  29 — Germans  take  Soissons. 

May  30 — Germans  cross  the  Ourcq. 

May  31 — Germans  reach  the  Marne. 

May  31 — "President  Lincoln"  sunk;    26  lost. 

May  31 — German  counter-attacks  on  Cantigny 
repulsed  by  Americans. 

June    2 — Germans  take  Chateau  Thierry. 

June  2 — American  marines  reach  front  at 
Chateau  Thierry. 

June  3 — Submarine  off  American  coast  sinks 
"Carolina"  and  other  ships. 

June  6-7-10-11 — American  marines  take  Bel- 
leau  Wood. 

June    9 — German  drive,  Montdidier  to  Noyon. 

June  15-23 — Austrian  drive  on  Piave. 

June  25 — Austrians  driven  across  Piave. 

June  26 — Americans  take  Belleau  ridge. 

June  30 — Italians  take  Monte  de  Valbella  and 
Monte  del  Rosso. 

July  1 — Hospital  ship  "Llandovery  Castle" 
sunk;  234  lost. 

July     1 — Americans  take  Vaux. 
*•  July     4 — Czecho-Slovaks  take  Vladivostok. 

July     6 — Italians  clear  Piave  delta. 

July  7 — German  ambassador  at  Moscow  as- 
sassinated. 

July  7-12 — Italians  advance  in  Albania. 


July  15 — Germans    begin    Marne-Champagne 

drive. 
July  18— Allied  counter-attack  on  Anne  and 

Marne. 
July  19— Cruiser  "San  Diego"  sank  c 


July  20— Germans  recross  the  Marne. 
July  21 — Chateau  Thierry  recaptured. 
July  27 — Germans  retire  to  the  Ourcq. 
July  28— Allies  take  Fere-en-TardenoH. 
July  23-30— Battle  of  Sergy. 
Aug.    2— French  take  Soissons. 
Aug.    3 — Germans  retire  across  the  Vesle. 
Aug.    4 — Americans  take  Fismes. 
•  Aug.     5— Allies  land  at  ArchangeL 
Aug.    6— Foch  made  marshal. 
Aug.    7— Allies  cross  Vesle. 
Aug.    8— Allied  drive  on  Amiens  front  begun. 
Aug.    9— Americans  take  Fismette. 
Aug.  10— Montdidier  retaken. 
Aug.  11— Nine   fishing   boats  sunk   off   Mas- 

Aug.  14 
^Aug.  14 
Aug.  14— Briti 


s  land  at  Vladivostok. 


begin  drive  south  of  the  Ohm. 
Aug.  21— French  take  Lassigny. 
Aug.  21— British  attack  Albert  to  Arras. 
Aug.  21— Germans  driven  across  Oise. 


Aug.  22— British  take  Albert. 
Aug.  22— BobheTfld 


United  States. 
Aug.  24— British  take  Bray  and  TbiepvaL 
Aug.  24— Austrians  retake  Berat. 

Aug.  KT— AM*  take  Rnyoand  T 


Aug.  28-29—  Americans  attack  Juvigny 


Au     31— British  retake  Mont  Kemmel. 
' 


\  retreat  to  1 

Sept.  7— French  take  Fort  de  Coniis. 
Sept.  12— Americans  take  St.  Missel  • 
Sept.  14— Drive  on  Macedonian  front  I 


.  .. 

Sept.  18— British  attack  Cambrai-St.  Quentin 


Sept.  20— Turks  defea 


Sept.  22— British  take  Nazareth. 
Sept.  23— Serbians  reach  the  \ar__ 
Sept.  24— British  take  Haifa  and  Acre. 
Sept.  26— American   campaign  on   the  Me 


drive  _  _ 

27— Bulgarians  ask  ar^ 
27— British  attack  on  Hindenburg  fine. 
2*3*— 27th    American    division    goes 
through    Hindenburg   tine   near   Le 
GMsK 

take  Fort  de  Malmaison. 

«-ait««ir  drive:  **•  Hou- 


Sept.  30 — Messines  ridge  retaken. 

Sept.  30 — Turks  surrender  west  of  Jordan. 

Oct.     1— British  take  Damascus. 

Oct.     2— St.  Quentin  taken. 

Oct.  3— British  go  through  Hindenburg  line 
north  of  St.  Quentin. 

Oct.     3— French  take  Challerange. 

Oct.     3— Le  Catelet  taken. 

Oct.     3— Lens  and  Armentieres  retaken. 

Oct.     4 — Naval  attack  on  Durazzo. 

Oct.   6-19 — American  advance  on  the  Meuse. 

Oct.  5 — King  Ferdinand  of  Bulgaria  abdi- 
cates. 

Oct.  6 — Germany  asks  peace  on  Wilson's 
terms. 

Oct.     7 — Germans  retreat  north  of  Reims. 

Oct.     7— Battle  of  St.  Soup  let. 

Oct.     8 — Cambrai-St.  Quentin  front  smashed. 

Oct.   10 — Le  Cateau  taken. 

Oct.  12 — Germany  again  offers  to  accept 
Wilson's  terms. 

Oct.   12— French  take  Craonne  and  Vouziers. 

Oct.   13— Serbians  take  Nish. 

Oct.   14— Roulers  taken. 

Oct.   IS— Menin  and  Thourout  taken. 

Oct.   IS— Americans  break  Kreimhilde  tine. 

Oct.   IS— Americans  take  Grand  Pre. 

Oct.   17— Ostend.  Courtrai  and  Lille  retaken. 

Oct.   18 — Bruges,  Zeebrugge  and  Thielt  taken. 

Oct.   18 — Turcoing.  Roubaix  and  Douai  take 


Oct.  21— 


take  Hill  299  and  BOM  de 


Oct.  »— British  reach  the  Scheldt. 

Oct.  23— Wilson's  reply  to  Germany. 

Oct.  23— Americans  take  Brieulles,  Hflb  297. 
299  and  281. 

Oct.  25— Italian*  begin  offensive  on  the  Piave. 

Oct.  27— German  note;  await  Allies'  terms. 

Oct.  27— Ludendorff  resigns. 

Oct.  27— Italians  cross  the  Piave. 

Oct.  27— British  take  Aleppo. 

Oct.  28— Austria  sends  note  to  Wilson  accept- 
ing terms  and  asking  armistice. 

Oct.  30— Italians  take  Vittoria. 

Oct.  30— British  defeat  Turks  on  the  Tigris. 

Oct.  31— Turkey  surrenders. 

Oct.  31— Austria  sends  i  imimissiimi  i  •  to  Diaz. 

Nor.    1 — Americans    again     attack     on     the 


Nov.    3— Iti 

Trieste. 
NOT.    3— Au 


r  Trent,  Rovereto  and 


NOT.  3— British  take  Vi 

NOT.  3— Serl 

NOT.  3— Count  Tissm 

NOT.  4— Allied 


NOT. 


Nor.    4— Italians  take  Scutari. 
NOT.    4— Americans  cross  the  Me 

Dsm 

NOT.    7 — Rebellion  in  German  navy. 
Nor.    7 — Americans  reach  Sedan. 
NOT.    9— Kaiser  abdicates. 
NOT.    9 — British  take  Tournai  and  Maubeuge. 
NOT.  11— British  take  Mons. 
NOT.  11.  11  A.  M.— ARMISTICE. 
NOT.  12 — Republic  proclaimed  in  Berlin. 
Nov.  19—  French  enter  Metz. 
Nov.  21— German  fleet  suuendeis. 


1914-WHEN  THE  LID  BLEW  OFF 

ON  June  28,  1914,  the  Archduke  Francis  Ferdinand,  heir-apparent  to  the 
throne  of  Austria-Hungary,  visited  the  city  of  Sarajevo,  capital  of  Bosnia, 
to  take  part  in  a  public  ceremony.    As  he  was  driving  through  the  town  a 
Bosnian  named  Cabrinoyicz  threw  two  bombs  at  his  automobile.    Both  fell 
short.  Despite  this  warning  and  the  supposed  excellence  of  the  Austrian  police 
system,  that  same  afternoon  a  young  Bosnian  named  Gabrilio  Prinzip  succeeded 
in  reaching  the  steps  of  his  automobile  and  fired  two  shots  from  an  automatic 
pistol.   His  aim  was  only  too  good.   Both  the  Archduke  and  his  wife,  a  Czech 
countess  whom  he  had  married  morganatically,  were  killed. 

AUSTRIA'S  ULTIMATUM 

Prinzip  was  seized,  but  was  later  given  the  comparative  immunity  of  a  prison 
sentence,  while  several  political  leaders  of  the  pro-Serbian  faction  were  held  as 
the  real  principals  and  three  of  them  were  executed.  The  Serbian  government 
immediately  expressed  its  horror,  and  was  assured  that  the  affair  would  not 
disturb  the  relations  between  Austria  and  Serbia.  The  world  in  general  assumed 
that  the  incident  would  end  where  it  had  begun — in  Bosnia.  Nearly  a  month 
passed.  Then  on  July  23d,  to  the  amazement  and  consternation  of  all  Europe, 
Austria-Hungary  sent  to  Serbia  the  most  startling  ultimatum  ever  addressed 
by  one  free  nation  to  another.  It  demanded: 

Prohibition  of  publication  hostile  to  Austria-Hungary;  suppression  of 
societies  engaged  in  propaganda  against  Austria-Hungary;  elimination  from 
the  schools  of  teaching  opposed  to  Austria-Hungary;  removal  from  the  Serbian 
military  service  of  officers  whom  Austria-Hungary  should  thereafter  name; 
acceptance  of  Austrian  military  and  judicial  commissions  to  carry  out  Austrian 
demands. 

Press,  public  meetings,  education,  military  service  and  the  administration  of 
justice  in  Serbia  must  all  be  turned  over  to  Austrian  dictation.  And  Serbia 
must  accept  these  terms  within  48  hours! 

Serbia  accepted!  The  terrified  little  nation  quibbled  on  only  two  of  the 
demands,  conceding  the  others  unreservedly,  and  concluded  with  an  offer  to 
refer  any  point  not  satisfactorily  answered  to  The  Hague  tribunal  or  to  the 
powers. 

And  then,  on  July  28th,  Austria  declared  war,  and  on  July  29th  the  great 
world  war  was  begun  by  the  shelling  of  Belgrade. 

HAND  OF  GERMANY 

The  alliance  between  Germany  and  Austria  was  defensive  only,  as  Italy,  the 
third  member  of  the  league,  later  showed.  Even  had  it  been  otherwise,  disre- 
gard of  its  obligations  for  the  purpose  of  preserving  peace  could  have  presented 
no  moral  difficulties  to  a  nation  which  was  soon  to  violate  equally-binding 
treaties  in  order  to  carry  out  her  plans  of  war.  The  slightest  word  from  Germany 
would  have  compelled  Austria-Hungary  to  settle  her  quarrel.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  Austrian  government  was  at  one  time  on  the  point  of  yielding  to  rea- 
son, but  Germany  compelled  it  to  go  on.  The  assassination  of  the  Archduke  was 
to  be  made  the  pretext  for  carrying  out  plans  of  military  aggression  which  the 
German  imperial  leaders  had  long  been  preparing.  These  plans  contemplated 
nothing  less  than  the  conquest  of  a  large  part  of  Europe,  if  not  of  the  world. 

Evidence  of  this  accumulated  during  the  progress  of  the  war. 

August  Thyssen,  a  leading  German  steel  manufacturer,  published  in  1917  a 
pamphlet  telling  about  several  meetings  of  German  business  men  between  1912 
and  1914  at  which  the  Emperor  promised  them  great  financial  rewards  for 
supporting  him  in  the  projected  war.  Thyssen  was  "personally  promised 
30,000  acres  in  Australia."  Other  firms  were  to  have  "special  trading  facilities 
in  India,  which  was  to  be  conquered  by  Germany,  be  it  noted,  by  the  end  of 
1915."  "A  syndicate  was  formed  for  the  exploitation  of  Canada," 


Prince  Lichnowsky,  who  was  German  ambassador  to  Great  Britain  when 
the  war  began,  wrote  for  his  family  archives  in  1916  a  record,  which  later  gained 
publication,  in  which  he  said  that  Serbia  had  accepted  almost  the  whole  ulti- 
matum "under  Russian  and  British  pressure"  and  that  "Count  Berchtold  was 
even  prepared  to  satisfy  himself  with  the  Serbian  reply."  Lichnowsky  added  that 
he  had  to  support  in  London  a  policy,  "the  heresy  of  which  I  recognized"  and 
suggested  that  the  German  people  were  dominated  by  "the  spirit  of  Treitschke 
and  of  Bernhardi,  which  glorifies  war  as  an  end  in  itself." 

The  United  States  army  intelligence  service  learned  from  German  agents, 
arrested  in  this  country,  that  on  July  10,  1914,  a  corps  of  German  propagandists 
had  been  sent  to  neutral  countries  to  develop  sentiment  for  Germany  in  the 
war  which  was  about  to  begin. 

Henry  Morgenthau,  United  States  ambassador  to  Turkey,  was  told,  a  few 
weeks  after  the  war  started,  by  both  the  Austrian  and  the  German  ambassadors 
at  Constantinople  that  war  had  been  decided  on  at  a  conference  in  Berlin  early 
in  July. 

RUSSIA  AND   FRANCE 

This  was  why  when  Russia  called  her  reserves  to  the  colors  on  the  day  fol- 
lowing Austria's  declaration  of  war  on  Serbia,  Germany  immediately  began  to 
mobilize  and  on  August  1st  declared  war  on  Russia.  It  was  not  on  the  Russian 
frontier,  however,  that  Germany  massed  her  troops.  France  was  bound  to 
Russia  by  a  treaty  of  alliance;  and,  before  sending  her  ultimatum  to  Russia, 
Germany  demanded  of  France  whether  she  would  remain  neutral.  France 
ordered  mobilization,  but  directed  her  troops  to  keep  ten  miles  inside  the 
French  border.  Nevertheless,  cavalry  skirmishes  occurred  on  both  the  French 
and  Russian  frontiers  on  the  following  day,  August  2d,  and  on  the  same  day 
German  troops  entered  the  neutral  duchy  of  Luxemburg,  which  could  only 
protest.  The  formal  declaration  of  war  on  France  was  made  on  August  3d. 

BELGIUM  IN  THE  WAY 

The  first  and  greatest  horrors  of  war,  however,  were  to  fall,  not  on  Serbia  or 
Russia  or  France,  but  on  a  nation  which  was  absolutely  inoffensive  and  uncon- 
cerned in  the  quarrel.  On  July  31st,  before  any  declaration  of  war  except  that 
of  Austria  had  occurred,  three  German  army  corps  started  for  the  Belgian 
border,  and  on  August  2d  the  amazed  and  frightened  government  of  Belgium 
received  an  ultimatum  demanding  the  right  of  passage  for  the  German  army 
through  Belgian  territory.  The  particular  wickedness  of  this  note  lay  in  the 
concluding  paragraph,  which  read:  "Should  Belgium  oppose  the  German  troops, 
and  particularly  should  she  throw  difficulties  in  the  way  of  their  march  by  a 
resistance  of  the  fortresses  on  the  Meuse,  or  by  destroying  railways,  roads, 
tunnels  or  other  similar  works,  Germany  will,  to  her  regret,  be  compelled  to 
consider  Belgium  as  an  enemy." 

Germany  was  not  content  to  ask  the  privilege  of  sending  troops  through  Bel- 
gium and  to  offer  alliance  and  protection  against  invasion  by  France,  which  she 
professed  to  believe  was  threatened,  though  France  had  just  given  the  most  posi- 
tive assurance  to  the  contrary.  She  was  not  even  satisfied  to  announce  her  purpose 
to  move  through  Belgium  and  leave  the  question  of  Belgium's  attitude  for  the 
future.  She  placed  Belgium  at  the  outset  in  the  position  of  a  subject  province  to  be 
subdued  if  it  dared  to  resist.  In  view  of  the  later  attitude  of  the  German  leaders, 
there  can  be  little  doubt  that  this  note  was  written  in  the  expectation  and  hope 
that  Belgium  would  resist,  since  that  would  further  the  project  of  annexation. 

Germany's  course  violated  written  as  well  as  moral  law.  The  perpetual  neu- 
trality of  Belgium  had  been  solemnly  guaranteed  by  a  treaty  between  the  five 
great  powers,  including  Prussia,  as  early  as  1831  and  had  several  times  been 
reaffirmed.  Chancellor  von  Bethmann-Hollweg  frankly  admitted  in  his  speech 
to  the  reichstag  on  August  4th  that  Germany  had  acted  "contrary  to  the  dic- 
tates of  international  law."  The  excuse  offered  was  "military  necessity." 


BRITISH  LION  AROUSED 

When  the  British  ambassador  at  Berlin  gave  warning  of  the  consequence  of 
violating  Belgium's  neutrality,  the  German  foreign  minister,  Von  Jagow, 
heatedly  referred  to  the  treaty  as  a  "scrap  of  paper."  Great  Britain's  attitude 
up  to  this  time  had  been  that  of  a  mediator  seeking  to  avert  the  general  calamity. 
She  had  a  friendly  understanding  with  France  and  Russia,  but  was  not  allied 
with  them  by  treaty.  It  is  probable  that  even  when  Premier  Asquith  and  his 
associates  sent  an  ultimatum  to  Germany  demanding  that  Belgium's  neutrality 
be  respected,  they  cherished  a  strong  hope  that  their  threat  would  compel  Ger- 
many to  pause.  But  if  so,  the  hope  was  disappointed,  and  on  August  4th  the 
war  became  general  with  Germany  and  Austria-Hungary  on  one  side  and 
Great  Britain,  France,  Belgium,  Russia  and  Serbia  on  the  other.  Montenegro 
came  to  the  aid  of  Serbia  four  days  later. 

"FORTISSIMI  SUNT  BELGAE" 

The  Belgians  were  able  to  bring  a  garrison  of  25,000  men  and  a  field  army  of 
120,000  men  to  the  defense  of  Liege,  and  with  this  force  they  held  off  superior 
numbers  of  Germans  for  four  days.  The  first  German  assault  was  completely 
repulsed.  They  were  unable,  however,  to  protect  their  flanks,  and  to  avoid 
being  surrounded  they  fell  back  to  a  line  running  through  Tirlemont  and 
Namur.  The  forts  of  Liege  were  not  reduced  until  the  Germans  brought  up 
heavy  siege  guns  nearly  two  weeks  later.  Although  the  Belgians  held  their 
ground  successfully  in  several  local  combats,  their  flanks  were  still  in  the  air 
and  their  line  much  too  thin  to  be  maintained.  They  withdrew  behind  the 
forts  of  Antwerp,  abandoning  Brussels  and  leaving  a  garrison  in  Namur,  which 
was  attacked  and  reduced  by  heavy  siege  artillery  after  a  ten  hours'  fight  on 
the  22d. 

"WHERE  ARE  THE  FRENCH?" 

The  French  mobilization  plans  concentrated  the  bulk  of  their  army  on  their 
eastern  frontier,  since  they  could  not  anticipate  an  attack  through  neutral 
Belgium.  General  Joffre  evidently  hoped  that  a  strong  movement  directly 
against  German  territory  might  force  the  Germans  to  abandon  the  Belgian 
invasion.  He  was  able  to  move  by  the  7th,  when  a  French  army  entered  Alsace, 
taking  Altkirch  and  Mulhausen  and  advancing  nearly  to  Colmar.  A  second 
French  army  penetrated  Lorraine  as  far  as  Saarburg  and  a  third  moved  toward 
Luxemburg.  The  Germans  claimed  that  all  three  were  badly  beaten.  At  least, 
they  failed  to  inflict  the  necessary  defeat  on  the  Germans,  and  the  danger  from 
the  north  made  it  impossible  to  continue  the  movement.  All  three  retreated, 
and  Saarburg,  Mulhausen  and  Altkirch  were  again  left  in  German  hands. 

THE  "CONTEMPTIBLE  LITTLE  ARMY" 

The  British  had  a  regular  army  of  about  370,000  men,  scattered  in  all  parts 
of  the  world,  with  some  100,000  reserves  and  240,000  Territorials,  similar  to  the 
American  National  Guard.  Lord  Kitchener  was  made  minister  of  war  with 
almost  dictatorial  powers.  With  great  energy  he  succeeded  in  landing  in  France 
about  90,000  infantry  and  cavalry  with  400  guns  by  the  13th  and  by  the  22d, 
Sir  John  French,  who  commanded,  had  thrown  four  weak  divisions  of  infantry 
and  five  brigades  of  cavalry  across  the  path  of  the  Germans  at  Mons,  near  the 
southern  border  of  Belgium.  They  were  attacked  on  the  23d  by  greatly  superior 
forces  of  Germans  under  Von  Kluck,  but  held  their  ground  steadily  throughout 
the  day.  Probably  they  could  have  maintained  their  position  longer,  but  Sir 
John  French  received  word  that  the  French  on  his  right  at  Charleroi  had  given 
way,  while  his  left,  which  was  in  the  air,  was  also  being  enveloped.  The  retreat 
from  Mons  and  Charleroi  occupied  eleven  days  and  carried  the  British,  who 
were  on  the  outer  rim  of  the  great  backward- wheeling  line,  140  miles  into  the 
heart  of  France.  Fighting  was  almost  continuous  during  these  eleven  days, 
though  it  slackened  into  detached  skirmishes  of  small  proportions  toward  the 


last.  The  general  plan  of  the  retreat  was  to  withdraw,  usually  at  night,  by  the 
north-and-south  roads  and  to  deploy  and  fight  along  each  of  the  east-and-west 
roads.  The  most  severe  action  for  the  British  was  on  the  Le  Cateau-Cambrai 
road  on  the  26th.  General  Smith-Dorrien's  Second  corps  was  here  joined  by  the 
Fourth  division,  fresh  from  England.  It  went  into  shallow  ditches  which  had 
been  dug  in  advance  by  local  labor,  mostly  French  women,  but  with  so  little 
military  supervision  that  through  long  stretches  the  earth  had  been  thrown  out 
on  the  wrong  side  of  the  trench.  The  weary  soldiers  had  to  spend  most  of  the 
night  reversing  these  parapets  with  only  their  mess  tins  for  tools,  for  they  had 
not  yet  learned  the  vital  importance  of  carrying  spades.  All  the  next  day  they 
held  off  three  German  corps  with  a  fourth  working  around  their  flank  and 
they  succeeded  in  withdrawing  safely  during  the  night.  A  French  force 
had  a  similar  action  near  Guise. 

BATTLE  OF  THE  MARNE 

If  General  Joffre  ever  had  a  hope  that  the  Germans  could  be  held  on  the 
Belgian  frontier  till  his  main  army  could  get  up,  it  could  not  have  existed  after 
the  23d.  From  that  date  his  obvious  policy  was  merely  to  retard  the  German 
advance  until  he  could  bring  back  his  army  from  Alsace  and  get  into  position 
before  Paris.  The  capital  was  hastily  provisioned  for  a  siege  and  the  govern- 
ment was  removed  to  Bordeaux,  but  there  was  no  intention  of  giving  up  without 
a  fight.  The  line  ran  along  the  Great  Morin  River,  rather  than  the  Marne, 
from  Langy  through  Sezanne  to  Vitry-le-Francois,  whence  it  looped  to  the  north 
around  Verdun,  which  had  not,  like  Reims  and  Chalons,  been  abandoned. 
Stretching  down  the  heights  of  the  Meuse,  the  front  was  continued  by  General 
de  Castlenau's  army  of  Lorraine  along  the  hills  just  east  of  Nancy,  known  as 
the  Grand  Couronne.  Here  the  Kaiser  came  in  person  to  witness  a  battle 
which  was  to  lay  all  France  at  his  feet.  In  seven  days  of  hard  fighting,  however, 
from  August  31st  to  September  6th,  De  Castlenau  completely  repulsed  the 
German  attack.  Meanwhile,  Joffre,  on  September  5th,  ordered  his  troops  south 
of  the  Marne  to  take  the  offensive.  In  order  to  give  better  support  to  the  armies 
east  of  him,  Von  Kluck  turned  eastward,  marching  directly  across  the  British 
front.  He  thereby  exposed  his  flank  to  the  British,  who  promptly  attacked. 
A  more  serious  blow  was  dealt  by  the  Sixth  French  army  under  General  Man- 
oury,  which,  marching  out  of  Paris,  struck  the  German  flank  north  of  Meaux. 
Von  Kluck  turned  back  to  meet  this  danger,  trusting  to  his  associates  to  extend 
westward  and  fill  the  gap.  Near  Le  Fere  Champenoise  the  movement  missed 
connection.  General  Foch,  in  command  of  the  Ninth  army,  threw  his  Moroccans 
and  French  into  the  gap,  and  the  Kaiser's  one  chance  for  crushing  France  and 
attaining  world  empire  ended  right  there. 

"WE  BEAT  THEM  ON  THE  AISNE" 

The  pursuit  recovered  Chalons,  Reims  and  Soissons,  but  Soissons  and  Reims 
remained  under  the  fire  of  the  German  artillery  and  were  ruthlessly  battered  to 
ruins.  The  Germans  even  shelled  and  destroyed  the  beautiful  Reims  cathedral 
to  the  horror  of  civilization,  though  at  the  time  the  first  shells  fell  it  was  being 
used  as  a  hospital  for  German  wounded. 

The  British,  although  their  public  thought  otherwise  at  the  time,  had  but  a 
small  part  in  the  battle  of  the  Marne,  being  called  on  for  little  more  than  to 
follow  up  the  retreat.  They  had  only  about  80,000  men  on  the  field  as  com- 
pared with  800,000  French  and  more  than  1,000,000  Germans.  The  victory  was 
due  to  the  attacks  of  Manoury  and  Foch  and  the  stand  of  De  Castlenau  east 
of  Nancy,  so  far  as  it  can  be  attributed  to  any  part  of  the  Allied  army  more 
than  to  another.  The  British,  however,  bore  the  principal  burden  of  the  battle 
of  the  Aisne,  which  followed  on  September  12-14th.  They  crossed  the  Aisne  on  a 
twenty-mile  front  and  forced  back  the  German  line  from  the  region  of  Missy  to 
Troyon  on  the  Chemin  des  Dames.  The  taking  of  Troyon  on  the  14th  by  the  First 
corps  under  General  Sir  Douglas  Haig  was  a  particularly  brilliant  achievement. 

10 


But  the  Germans  had  reinforced  their  front  by  calling  in  the  garrisons  from 
Amiens  and  other  points  west  of  the  Somme,  thereby  relinquishing  the  open 
gateway  to  the  Channel  ports,  for  the  recovery  of  which  they  were  to  fight 
desperately  during  the  succeeding  years.  The  surrender  on  September  9th  of 
Maubeuge  after  a  siege  of  ten  days  also  released  a  considerable  force,  which 
was  rushed  at  once  to  the  Aisne.  By  the  17th  the  Allies  had  concluded  that  the 
German  positions  were  too  strong  to  be  forced  by  frontal  attack,  and  thereafter 
the  armies  on  the  Aisne  began  to  settle  down  into  trench  lines  which  were 
maintained  with  slight  changes  for  the  next  four  years. 

BELGIUM'S  MARTYRDOM 

Meanwhile,  terrible  things  had  been  happening  in  Belgium.  The  first  con- 
siderable town  entered  by  the  Germans  after  crossing  the  Belgian  border  was 
Vise,  a  place  of  4,500  population.  They  did  little  damage  when  they  passed 
through  on  August  4th,  but  on  the  15th,  after  the  capture  of  Liege,  they  re- 
turned and  systematically  burned  the  entire  village  and  scattered  the  inhabi- 
tants. When  Hugh  Gibson,  the  American  consul  at  Brussels,  visited  the  spot 
four  months  afterward,  he  found  there  only  two  or  three  houses,  one  old  man, 
two  children  and  a  cat.  There  was  no  excuse  for  this  atrocity.  It  was  the  first 
act  in  the  German  policy,  later  to  become  familiar,  of  making  war,  not  on 
armies  alone,  but  on  the  entire  population  of  the  countries  which  opposed  them. 
The  people  of  Vise  were  punished  because  the  Belgian  army  had  dared  to  resist 
the  Germans  at  Liege.  It  was  the  application  to  civilized  Europe  of  the  same 
terrible  methods  which  the  Germans  had  employed  to  subdue  rebellious  negroes 
in  their  African  colonies. 

What  happened  to  Vise,  however,  was  but  an  introduction.  The  atrocity 
which  aroused  the  greatest  horror  was  the  burning  of  Louvain,  a  university 
city  of  45,000  inhabitants.  On  August  24-2 5th,  the  Belgian  army  made  a  sortie 
from  Antwerp  and  drove  the  Germans  back  some  distance.  It  is  said  that  Ger- 
man troops  retreating  into  Louvain  were  fired  on  erroneously  by  the  German 
garrison.  The  Germans  said  they  were  sniped  by  citizens.  Whichever  story 
was  true,  on  the  27th  the  Germans  began  to  pillage  and  destroy  the  town.  The 
population  was  driven  out,  old  men,  women,  children  and  lunatics  from  the 
asylum.  Many  were  crowded  into  railroad  cars  and  carried  off  into  Germany 
under  conditions  which  entailed  appalling  suffering.  Many  were  murdered 
in  the  town.  It  was  a  savage,  drunken  orgy,  which  continued  for  eight 
days.  The  cathedral  and  university  library  were  destroyed  and  about  one-third 
of  the  city.  Similar  scenes  were  enacted  all  over  Eastern  Belgium  during  the 
latter  days  of  August  and  early  September.  On  September  10-14th,  the  Belgian 
army  made  its  last  and  most  successful  sally  from  Antwerp,  hoping  to  menace 
the  German  flank  sufficiently  to  affect  the  position  on  the  Aisne.  The 
Belgians  recovered  Malines,  Aershot  and  Diest  only  to  find  them  reduced  to 
ruins.  Tamines,  Dinant  and  Andenne  were  among  the  other  most  important 
places  that  suffered.  Antwerp  on  August  26th  was  the  victim  of  another  kind 
of  atrocity  when  a  German  Zeppelin  dropped  bombs  on  the  heart  of  the  city — 
the  first  example  of  the  use  which  the  Germans  were  to  make  of  their  dirigible 
balloons. 

WORK  OF  MR.  HOOVER 

The  Belgians  had  not  only  been  subjected  to  fire  and  sword,  as  in  the  ancient 
days  of  savagery,  but  they  were  in  danger  of  starvation  from  the  stoppage  of 
industry  and  absorption  of  food  supplies  by  the  invaders.  Measures  of  relief, 
largely  financed  at  first  by  Great  Britain  and  later  by  the  United  States,  were 
organized  under  the  direction  of  an  American  engineer,  Herbert  C.  Hoover. 
For  the  next  four  years  the  people  of  Belgium  and  Northern  France  lived  mainly 
on  supplies  distributed  first  under  American  and  later  under  Spanish  direction, 
suffering  indescribable  horrors  to  the  very  last.  Their  wrecked  cities  were  still 
in  the  condition  to  which  the  Germans  had  reduced  them  in  1914,  or  worse, 
when  the  country  was  recovered  in  1918. 

11 


THE   CZAR'S  STEAM   ROLLER 

Although  the  mobilization  of  the  Russians  had  been  treated  by  Germany  as 
a  danger  which  would  admit  of  no  further  time  for  debate,  they  were  two  weeks 
behind  the  Germans  in  getting  into  action.  Their  first  success  was  at  Gum- 
binnen,  about  thirty  miles  inside  the  border  of  East  Prussia  on  the  railroad  from 
Koenigsberg  to  Vilna.  Here  on  August  20-2 1st  they  won  a  battle,  small  in 
itself,  but  very  important  in  its  effect,  for  it  opened  East  Prussia  to  invasion 
and  caused  the  German  staff  to  detach  several  corps  from  the  west  front  to 
protect  the  east.  This  undoubtedly  was  a  most  important  contribution  to  the 
Allied  success  on  the  Marne. 

The  Germans  had  their  revenge,  however,  at  Tannenburg  on  August  29-3 1st 
when  General  von  Hindenburg  laid  the  foundation  of  his  great  reputation  by 
entrapping  and  annihilating  two  Russian  army  corps,  taking  70,000  prisoners. 
The  blow  was  not  a  vital  one  to  Russia,  but  the  remainder  of  the  Russian  army 
in  the  north,  after  a  battle  on  the  line  of  Augerburg-Allenburg-Wehlau, 
September  7-1 3th,  was  driven  out  of  East  Prussia  and  across  Siwalki  to  the 
Niemen  River. 

In  the  south  the  Russians  were  more  fortunate.  The  Austrians  were  ready 
first  and,  advancing  from  Lemberg,  crossed  the  border  into  Poland  and  won  a 
battle  near  Krasnik  on  August  23-26th,  advancing  nearly  to  Lublin.  %They 
had  not,  however,  found  the  main  Russian  concentration,  which,  advancing 
from  the  fortress  triangle  of  Lutsk,  Rovno  and  Dubno,  seized  Tarnopol  and, 
pushing  forward  to  the  east  and  south  of  Lemberg,  broke  the  Austrian  defense 
and  captured,  first  Halicz  and,  on  September  2d,  Lemberg  itself.  The  Aus- 
trian army  was  thus  left  in  the  air,  with  its  base  in  enemy  hands.  Its  plight  was 
made  worse  by  an  immediate  attack  on  September  4-8th  along  the  line  of 
Rawaruska  and  Tomasov.  The  defeat  of  the  Austrians  was  so  overwhelming 
that  they  probably  would  have  been  forced  to  make  peace  at  once,  if  they  had 
not  had  Germany  to  lean  on.  They  were  driven  back  in  the  ensuing  months  to 
the  outskirts  of  Cracow  and  far  into  the  Carpathians.  Russian  Cossacks  raided 
well  into  Eastern  Hungary,  but  unfortunately  they  were  not  in  sufficient  force 
to  hold  the  mountain  passes  when  the  reaction  came. 

German  cavalry  had  raided  almost  to  the  gates  of  Warsaw,  but  retired  to  the 
German  border  after  the  Austrian  defeat,  and  in  the  latter  part  of  September 
the  Russians  resumed  the  offensive  in  the  north,  defeating  the  Germans  along 
the  Niemen  and  at  Augustowa  and  recovering  the  province  of  Siwalki. 

Hindenburg  countered  by  a  movement  across  the  ill-defended  Polish  frontier, 
and  by  the  middle  of  October  he  was  before  Warsaw  in  force.  There  he  was 
defeated  in  a  battle  lasting  from  October  15-23d.  He  retreated  out  of  Poland, 
drawing  the  Russians  after  him  in  the  direction  of  Cracow  and  Czenstpchowa. 
But  this  retreat  was  rather  strategic  than  forced.  Transferring  his  army 
swiftly  to  the  West  Prussian  front,  he  again  entered  Poland  in  November  from 
the  northwest.  A  series  of  desperate  battles  followed.  The  Russians,  moving 
up  from  the  southwest,  at  one  time  completely  surrounded  a  considerable  de- 
tachment of  the  German  army  under  General  von  Morgen,  but  the  Germans 
fought  their  way  out  and  the  Russians  in  early  December  were  forced  to  give 
up  Lodz  and  Lowicz  and  to  retire  to  the  line  of  the  Bzura  and  Rawka  rivers 
before  Warsaw.  PLUCKY  SERBIANS 

No  help  could  be  sent  to  the  Serbians  without  violating  neutral  territory,  and 
they  had  little  but  stout  hearts  to  depend  on.  They  were  promptly  invaded  by 
200,000  Austrians,  but  rallying  along  the  Jadar  River,  on  August  16-23d  they 
amazed  Europe  by  defeating  this  powerful  army  and  driving  it  back  across  the 
Danube  and  the  Save.  The  Austrians  renewed  the  attempt  in  November  with 
the  same  initial  success  as  before.  On  December  2d,  they  captured  Belgrade, 
but  once  more  the  Serbians  rallied,  and  between  December  6th  and  14th  they 
again  won  a  complete  victory,  recovering  Belgrade  and  restoring  the  line  of  the 
Danube  and  the  Save,  which  they  maintained  for  a  year. 

12 


MASTERS   OF  THE   SEA 

The  German  army  was  not  better  prepared  for  instant  action  on  land  than 
was  the  British  navy  for  war  at  sea.  While  its  greatest  work  throughout  the 
war  consisted  in  keeping  open  the  sea  routes  for  the  transport  of  troops  and 
commerce,  it  continually  challenged  the  powerful  fleet  of  Germany  to  come  out 
and  fight.  The  first  of  these  challenges  was  on  August  28th.  A  British  subma- 
rine came  to  the  surface  off  Helgoland,  pretending  to  be  in  trouble,  in  the  hope 
of  decoying  the  German  vessels  from  the  bay.  A  swarm  of  German  light  cruisers 
and  destroyers  rushed  out,  whereupon  a  British  squadron,  just  out  of  sight  below 
the  horizon,  dashed  up  and  in  the  ensuing  fight  three  German  light  cruisers  and 
eight  destroyers  were  sunk  or  badly^crippled  with  small  loss  to  the  British. 

The  Germans  had  their  revenge  on  September  22d,  when  the  British  cruisers 
"Aboukir,"  "Cressy"  and  "Hogue"  were  caught  unguarded  off  the  coast  of 
Holland  and  sunk  by  the  submarine  "U-9,"  with  the  loss  of  most  of  their  crews. 

Several  German  cruisers  were  on  stations  in  remote  seas.  The  "Karlsruhe" 
was  off  the  Atlantic  coast  of  the  United  States.  After  being  hunted  for  some 
weeks,  she  mysteriously  disappeared,  supposably  by  an  internal  explosion.  The 
"Koenigsberg,"  after  one  successful  action  with  a  lighter  British  vessel  at 
Zanzibar,  was  chased  up  the  Rufiji  River  in  German  East  Africa,  where  she  was 
later  destroyed.  The  "Emden"  had  a  brilliant  career  of  three  months  in  the 
Indian  Ocean  as  a  commerce  destroyer  and  actually  raided  the  harbors  of 
Madras  and  Rangoon,  but  was,  finally,  destroyed  on  November  9th  by  the 
Australian  cruiser  "Sydney"  off  Cocos  island. 

The  largest  detached  German  squadron,  however,  was  in  the  Pacific.  Starting 
out  from  Tsing-tao  at  the  beginning  of  the  war,  the  armored  cruisers  "  Gneise- 
nau"  and  "Scharnhorst"  were  soon  joined  by  the  light  cruisers  "Nurnburg," 
"Leipsic"  and  "Dresden"  and  crossed  the  Pacific  without  molestation.  Off 
Coronel,  Chili,  on  November  1st,  the  Germans  encountered  the  British  armored 
cruisers  "Monmouth"  and  "Good  Hope"  and  the  light  cruiser  "Glasgow." 
The  British  guns  were  outranged  and  both  the  "Monmouth"  and  the  "Good 
Hope"  were  sunk  with  all  hands.  The  British  hastily  dispatched  a  large  fleet  of 
superior  vessels  and  on  December  8th  they  met  the  Germans  again  off  the 
Falkland  Islands  and  destroyed  the  entire  squadron. 

DRAGGING  IN  TURKEY 

The  battle  cruiser  "Goeben"  and  the  light  cruiser  "Breslau"  were  at  Naples. 
Forced  to  leave  by  Italy's  declaration  of  neutrality,  they  eluded  the  British 
squadron,  which  was  watching  for  them,  and  reached  Constantinople.  There 
they  were  nominally  transferred  to  the  Turks,  though  they  remained  under 
German  command.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  Germans  had  probably  long  since 
reached  an  understanding  with  the  Germanizedjleaders  of  the  Young  Turk  party 
that  Turkey  was  to  join  them  in  the  war.  It  caused  small  surprise,  therefore, 
when  the  recent  German  cruisers  in  late  October  raided  Russian  shipping  at 
Odessa.  The  Russian  ambassador  at  once  asked  for  his  passports  and  on 
November  5th  Great  Britain  and  the  other  Allies  declared  war  on  Turkey. 

POLITE  JAPAN 

The  one  punctilious  nation  was  Japan.  She  had  a  treaty  of  alliance  with 
Great  Britain  for  mutual  defense  in  the  East.  While  it  did  not  bind  her  to  enter 
the  European  war,  the  opportunity  to  even  scores  and  remove  a  menace  was 
not  to  be  neglected.  Promptly  on  August  16th  she  sent  an  ultimatum  to  Ger- 
many, demanding  the  evacuation  of  the  Shantung  peninsula,  and,  after  allowing 
the  prescribed  week  to  pass,  on  August  23d  declared  war.  Within  four  days  a 
blockade  of  Tsing-tao  was  established.  By  September  2d  an  army  had  been 
landed,  and  on  November  7th,  after  some  hard  fighting,  Tsing-tao  surrendered. 

Except  for  naval  work  in  the  Pacific  and  the  Mediterranean  and  by  sending 
supplies  to  Russia,  Japan  took  no  further  part  in  the  war  until  called  on  to 
land  troops  in  Siberia  in  1918. 

13 


ANTWERP  AND  YPRES 

The  Germans  made  one  more  attempt  to  break  the  French  front  in  late  Sep- 
tember when  a  force,  advancing  from  Metz,  reached  and  took  Saint  Mihiel. 
They  got  no  farther,  but  the  Saint  Mihiel  salient  remained  as  a  dagger  in  the 
side  of  France  for  four  years. 

Meanwhile,  after  the  Germans  had  taken  their  stand  on  the  Aisne,  the  French 
armies  under  Foch  began  a  movement  northward  around  the  German  flank. 
Battles  were  fought  before  Saint  Quentin  and  Peronne,  the  French  being  driven 
back  across  the  Somme.  There  were  other  actions  at  Arras  and  Lens.  It  was 
a  case  on  each  side  of  racing  and  fighting  for  the  exposed  flank  of  the  other  army. 

The  Germans,  recognizing  the  menace  of  the  Belgian  army  at  Antwerp, 
brought  up  siege  guns  and,  after  the  Belgian  sortie  of  September  10- 14th,  began 
to  press  the  city  closely.  The  British  sent  up  6,000  naval  reserves  from  Ostend — 
a  puny  force — and  on  October  7th  landed  the  Seventh  division  of  infantry  and 
some  cavalry  at  Zeebrugge  with  the  purpose  of  further  reinforcing  the  city. 
They  were  too  late.  On  October  9th,  the  Belgians  were  forced  to  evacuate, 
withdrawing  toward  the  coast. 

Meanwhile,  the  main  British  army  was  transferred  from  the  Aisne  front  to 
extend  General  Foch's  line  in  Flanders.  The  First  corps  arrived  in  time  to  take 
part  in  the  battle  for  Lille,  but  too  late  to  save  the  city,  which  the  Germans 
occupied  on  the  18th. 

The  broken  Belgian  army  had  abandoned  Ghent,  Bruges,  Ostend  and  all 
Western  Belgium  down  to  the  Yser  River,  where  it  checked  the  Germans  by  flood- 
ing the  country.  The  British  Seventh  division  from  Zeebrugge  aided  the  retreat 
of  the  Belgian  army  and  then  took  position  on  its  flank  before  Ypres.  The 
remaining  six  divisions  of  British  filled  the  gap  down  to  the  French  sector, 
and  the  continuous  front  from  the  Channel  to  Switzerland  was  formed. 

The  first  battle  of  Ypres  lasted  from  the  middle  of  October  till  well  into 
November  and  included  heavy  attacks  by  the  Germans  against  the  Belgians, 
particularly  at  Dixmude.  The  British  at  first  attempted  to  advance  and  thereby 
gave  to  the  Ypres  position  its  bulging  form.  They  were  forced  to  recognize  the 
superior  numbers  and  equipment  of  the  Germans,  however,  and  held  themselves 
fortunate  to  maintain  a  successful  defensive. 

There  were,  in  fact,  eventually  as  many  as  750,000  Germans  facing  these 
first  seven  divisions  of  the  exhausted  British  regular  army.  A  reinforcement 
from  an  unlooked-for  source,  however,  was  obtained  in  October  when  a  corps 
of  the  British-Indian  army  was  landed  in  France.  The  first  of  the  Indian  troops 
went  into  action  near  Festubert  on  October  21st.  They  remained  in  France 
during  the  winter  and  performed  good  service,  but  the  following  spring  were 
sent  back  to  Egypt. 

On  November  llth  the  Germans  made  their  supreme  effort  to  break  through 
to  the  Channel  ports,  using  the  redoubtable  Prussian  Guard.  Though  they 
gained  some  ground,  they  were  repulsed. 

Happily  the  French  brought  up  a  heavy  reinforcement  in  time  to  discourage 
the  Germans  from  making  another  attack,  and  the  lines  settled  down  into 
muddy  and  frozen  trenches  for  the  winter. 


14 


1915-FROM  HOPE  TO  GLOOM 

THE  Allied  cause  at  the  end  of  the  1914  campaigns  looked  more  hopeful 
than  it  again  appeared  until  the  final  turn  of  the  tide  in  1918.  The  Ger- 
mans had  been  beaten  in  open  battle  on  the  Marne  and  had  been  blocked 
at  Ypres  and  Saint  Mihiel.  The  Russians  had  completely  broken  the  Austrian 
army  and,  despite  some  serious  disasters,  had  fought  the  German  armies  to  a 
standstill.  The  Serbians  had  driven  back  two  Austrian  invasions  and  held 
their  country  intact.  The  general  plan  of  campaign  devised  by  the  Allies  for 
1915,  was  to  occupy  as  large  a  force  of  Germans  as  possible  in  the  west,  while 
the  Russians  with  their  great  numbers  and  wider  field  for  maneuvering  should 
attempt  either  to  carry  the  war  into  Hungary  and  Germany  or,  at  least,  to 
draw  increasing  numbers  to  the  eastern  front  until  the  German  line  in  the  west 
had  been  sufficiently  weakened  to  admit  of  a  successful  assault.  But  the  Allies 
were  counting  too  much  on  the  Russians. 

DISASTER  AT  MAZURIAN  LAKES 

The  Grand  Duke  Nicholas  continued  his  offensive  throughout  the  winter  in 
the  Carpathians  and  by  spring  had  fairly  passed  the  Beskid  range  and  was 
looking  down  into  the  plains  of  Hungary.  The  Turks  were  defeated  on  the 
border  of  Transcaucasia.  A  second  invasion  of  East  Prussia  was  undertaken 
and  was  pushed  well  into  the  region  of  the  Mazurian  lakes.  There  on  February 
12th  a  Russian  army  was  again  trapped  and  routed  even  more  disastrously  than 
at  Tannenburg  in  the  preceding  August.  The  pursuit,  which  lasted  till  the 
22d,  drove  the  Russians  into  Grodno  and  across  the  Niemen.  The  Germans 
claimed  100,000  prisoners  and  more  than  300  cannon. 

FALL  OF  PRZEMYSL 

The  blow  was  offset  and  Russian  hopes  raised  to  the  highest  point  that  they 
ever  reached  during  the  war  when  on  March  22d  the  fortress  of  Przemysl,  in 
Galicia,  which  had  been  under  siege  since  the  preceding  November,  was  sur- 
rendered with  an  Austrian  army  of  130,000  men. 

RUSSIA'S  DEBACLE 

But  the  Germans,  who  had  brought  the  Austrian  armies  under  the  German 
general  staff  and  were  now  intermingling  Austrian  and  German  troops 
throughout  the  eastern  front,  were  preparing  a  terrible  revenge.  On  May  2d 
the  blow  fell  along  the  Dunajec  River,  being  concentrated  particularly  at 
Gorlice.  The  heaviest  artillery  fire  which  had  yet  been  felt  in  the  war  shattered 
completely  the  Russian  front.  The  Russians  attempted  to  stand  along  the  San 
two  weeks  later,  but  were  again  overwhelmed.  The  armies  in  the  Carpathians 
had  to  retreat  precipitately  and  narrowly  escaped  capture.  Przemysl  and  Lem- 
berg  were  recaptured  during  June,  and  by  July  the  Russians  were  driven  back 
into  Poland.  All  the  results  of  the  victories  in  the  preceding  September  were 
lost,  and  the  Russians  had  been  dealt  a  blow  from  which  they  never  fully 
recovered. 

NIBBLING 

The  Allies  watched  these  events  without  attempting  a  serious  diversion  in 
the  west,  but  they  undertook  a  series  of  minor  operations,  which  General  Joffre 
described  as  "nibbling."  The  taking  of  Steinbach  and  Thann  early  in  January 
gave  the  French  a  hold  on  Alsace,  which  they  maintained  throughout  the  war. 
An  attempt  to  advance  from  Soissons  in  January  was  repulsed  disastrously, 
but  the  French  fared  better  in  the  Champagne,  where  they  made  considerable 
gains  in  the  region  of  Perthes.  There  was  another  success  at  Les  Eparges,  on 
the  heights  of  the  Meuse,  in  April.  Still  more  important  were  a  series  of  opera- 
tions near  Carency  in  May  and  June  which  resulted  in  the  capture  of  an  elabo- 
rate system  of  trenches,  known  as  the  Labyrinth.  This  was  the  first  development 
of  a  method  of  taking  trenches  and  was  due  to  General  Foch. 

15 


DOGGER  BANK 

The  second  naval  battle  in  the  North  Sea  occurred  on  January  24th.  Two  or 
three  times  during  the  fall  of  1914,  German  cruisers  had  appeared  off  the 
British  coast,  dropped  a  few  shells  on  unimportant  places  and  fled  back  to 
their  base  before  they  could  be  overhauled.  One  such  raid  on  Scarborough  in 
December  aroused  particular  indignation  among  the  British.  On  January  24th 
a  raiding  squadron  of  this  character,  consisting  of  four  battle  cruisers,  was 
overtaken  off  Dogger  Bank.  One  German  ship,  the  "Bluecher,"  was  sunk,  and 
the  other  three  were  damaged.  The  British  had  little  trouble  from  such  raids 
thereafter. 

NEUVE   CHAPPELLE 

An  operation  in  support  of  the  French  "nibblings,"  but  somewhat  more 
ambitious,  was  begun  by  the  British  north  of  La  Bassee  on  March  10th.  In 
an  attack  lasting  three  days  the  village  of  Neuve  Chappelle  and  adjoining  ter- 
ritory were  captured,  but  the  hope  of  breaking  through  the  German  lines  failed, 
and  the  British  losses  were  out  of  proportion  to  the  results  achieved.  It  was  the 
first  British  offensive  against  trench  lines.  It  was  followed  in  April  by  a  suc- 
cessful attack  on  Hill  60. 

FIRST  USE   OF  GAS 

The  Germans  countered  by  introducing  a  new  horror — the  most  dastardly 
weapon  ever  employed  in  civilized  warfare.  On  April  22d,  French  and  Canadian 
troops  holding  the  line  from  Bixschoote  to  Langemarck,  north  of  Ypres,  saw  a 
strange  yellow  cloud  rise  from  the  German  trenches  and  roll  slowly  toward 
them.  It  was  the  first  sight  of  poison  gas.  The  effect  on  those  who  inhaled  it 
was  frightful — a  slow  death  by  torture  in  most  cases.  The  Moroccan  con- 
tingent with  the  French  fled  in  panic.  The  Canadians  tied  their  handkerchiefs 
and  coatsleeves  over  their  faces,  closed  the  gap  and  somehow  held  on.  Out  of 
three  brigades  they  lost  197  officers  and  5,403  men.  British  and  Indian  units 
were  hurried  up,  and  the  Germans  gained  only  about  two  miles. 

GALLIPOLI 

The  special  purpose  of  the  Germans  in  dragging  the  Turks  into  the  war  was 
to  cut  the  Suez  Canal  and  invade  Egypt.  The  British  declared  Egypt  independent 
of  Turkey.  An  ambitious  campaign  in  November  brought  a  column  of  some 
thousands  of  Turks  straggling  across  the  desert.  They  were  easily  repulsed. 

Partly  as  a  punishment,  but  more  with  the  hope  of  taking  Constantinople 
and  crushing  the  Turks  at  once,  a  squadron  of  British  and  French  ships  on 
February  19th  shelled  the  forts  guarding  the  entrance  to  the  Dardanelles.  The 
attack  was  repeated  on  the  25th,  and  had  the  ships  been  accompanied  by  an 
adequate  landing  force,  the  forts  might  have  been  taken.  The  Turks  were  very 
ill  supplied  with  guns  and  were  almost  without  ammunition.  The  Germans 
rushed  supplies  to  them,  however,  and  when,  on  March  18th,  the  Allied  fleet 
delivered  what  was  intended  to  be  the  final  blow,  the  Turks  sent  floating  mines 
down  the  channel,  sinking  three  battleships  and  badly  damaging  two  others. 

It  was  then  recognized  that  the  straits  could  not  be  forced  by  naval  attack 
alone,  and  an  expedition  of  130,000  men  under  General  Sir  Ian  Hamilton  was 
organized  at  Alexandria.  It  arrived  late  in  April  and  a  landing  was  made  after 
hard  fighting  on  the  point  of  the  peninsula  on  April  25th.  A  series  of  hard 
battles  was  fought  during  May  and  early  June,  but  the  Turks  could  not  be 
dislodged.  The  Germans  sent  submarines  into  the  Mediterranean  and  the 
British  lost  three  more  battleships  from  this  cause.  British  submarines  two  or 
three  times  ran  the  straits  and  raided  shipping  in  the  Sea  of  Marmora  and  the 
port  of  Constantinople  itself — an  enterprise,  which,  if  tried  in  the  first  attack, 
might  have  demoralized  the  Turks  and  gained  the  victory.  On  August  10th 
another  desperate  assault  was  made  by  Australian  and  Indian  troops.  It  failed 
and  after  hanging  on  for  the  remainder  of  the  summer,  the  army  was  with- 
drawn in  December  and  the  following  January. 

16 


ITALIAN,  BALKAN,  PALESTINE  AND  MESOPOTAMIAN  FRONTS 


COPrRIGHT,  1919,  BY  J.N.  MATTHEWS  CO.  BUFFALO,  N.Y. 


WESTERN  FRONT 


WESTERN  FRONT 


EASTERN  FRONT 


^TH^ 


E ASTKRN  FRONT 

Farthest  advance  of 
Russians : 
Germans  and  (.  ^^^^ 

Austrian-  Hungarians^ 

Railroads  thus:  

Forts  thus: 


Lonftitude         East         25°        fi 


COPYRIGHT.  1»1 


I.  MATTHEWS  CO,,    BUFFALO,      fl.r. 


ENTER  ITALY 

The  moral  effect  of  the  Russian  defeats  was  largely  offset  among  the  Allies 
by  Italy's  declaration  of  war  on  Austria-Hungary  on  May  23d.  Italy  had 
declared  neutrality  on  August  4,  1914,  thereby  contributing  to  the  success  at 
the  Marne  by  releasing  the  French  from  the  necessity  of  guarding  the  Italian 
border.  The  Germans  made  desperate  efforts  to  secure  Italy's  alliance  or,  at 
least,  her  continued  neutrality,  but  the  Italians  were  fired  by  the  Garibaldian 
spirit  for  the  redemption  of  Italian  lands  still  held  by  Austria.  Moreover,  they 
distrusted  the  German  word.  They  took  the  field  at  once  and  pushed  their 
lines  across  the  boundary,  but  gained  no  important  success  during  1915. 

GERMANY'S  COLONIES 

In  addition  to  taking  Tsing-tao,  the  Japanese  quickly  occupied  the  Caroline* 
Marshall  and  Marianne  islands.  Australian  and  New  Zealand  forces  seized 
German  Samoa,  the  Bismarck  archipelago,  the  Solomon  islands  and  New  Guinea 
in  August  and  September,  1914.  Togoland  on  the  Gulf  of  Guinea  was  taken  by 
forces  from  the  adjoining  British  and  French  colonies  also  in  August,  1914. 
An  attack  by  a  British  naval  force  on  Tanga,  a  port  of  German  East  Africa,  on 
November  3-5,  1914,  however,  met  disaster. 

The  conquest  of  German  Southwest  Africa  was  undertaken  by  the  Union  of 
South  Africa  under  the  Boer  premier,  General  Louis  Botha.  He  led  a  brilliant 
campaign  across  the  deserts,  where  the  Germans  had  poisoned  every  well  as 
they  retired,  and  on  July  9,  1915,  he  received  the  complete  surrender  of  this 
entire  colony. 

Late  in  1915,  the  British  prepared  to  take  revenge  for  their  defeat  at  Tanga 
by  organizing  a  strong  expedition  against  German  East  Africa.  It  was  made  up 
of  British  and  Boer  troops  under  command  of  the  Boer  General,  Jan  Christian 
Smuts.  The  attack  was  made  from  British  East  Africa  and  had  the  support  of 
a  Belgian  force  moving  from  the  Congo.  During  the  spring  of  1916  the  Ger- 
mans were  driven  from  the  settled  parts  of  the  colony,  but  they  continued  to 
keep  up  guerrilla  warfare  in  the  remote  jungles  until  the  end  of  the  war. 

The  Germans  in  the  Cameroons  also  offered  strong  resistance.  Colonial 
troops  from  the  adjoining  British  and  French  possessions  carried  on  a  difficult 
jungle  campaign  during  most  of  1915,  and  on  February  18,  1916,  gained  the 
complete  conquest  of  the  colony. 

CONQUEST  OF  POLAND 

The  Germans  were  not  content  with  their  success  in  merely  driving  the 
Russians  out  of  East  Prussia  and  Galicia.  Their  pursuit  into  Southern  Poland 
was  temporarily  checked  by  the  Russians  near  Krasnik  on  July  2-4th,  but  on 
July  14th  the  Germans  began  a  new  invasion  from  the  north,  at  the  same  time 
renewing  their  attack  in  the  south.  Przasnysz,  fifty  miles  due  north  of  Warsaw, 
was  quickly  taken.  Lublin  and  Cholm,  southeast  of  Warsaw  fell.  A  third  Ger- 
man-Austrian army,  driving  up  through  southwest  Poland,  crossed  the  Vistula 
between  Warsaw  and  its  protecting  fortress  of  Ivangorod. 

The  Russian  soldiers  were  resisting  with  splendid  courage,  but  their  govern- 
ment had  failed  them.  They  were  so  short  of  rifles  that  men  were  sent  unarmed 
into  the  trenches  to  take  up  the  weapons  of  fallen  comrades.  In  some  sectors 
the  troops  were  allowed  to  fire  only  eight  or  nine  cartridges  per  day. 

With  both  flanks  turned,  the  troops  which  had  stopped  the  Germans  on  the 
Bzura-Rawka  line  the  preceding  fall,  and  held  it  ever  since,  had  no  choice  but 
to  retreat.  Warsaw  was  taken  on  August  4th.  The  Russians  foolishly  left  a 
large  garrison  in  the  fortress  of  Novogeorgievsk,  a  little  northwest  of  Warsaw, 
and  after  a  short  siege  it  fell  to  the  German  42-centimeter  guns  on  the  19th, 
with  90,000  men  and  1,200  cannon.  Brest-Litovsk,  with  an  enormous  accumu- 
lation of  stores  which  had  never  reached  the  front,  was  blown  up  and  burned 
by  the  Russians,  and  the  Germans  occupied  the  place  on  the  26th. 

Turning  to  the  fortresses  along  the  Niemen,  the  Germans  captured  Kovno 

21 


on  the  18th  with  800  guns,  Ossowietz,  Bialystok  and  Olita  in  rapid  succession 
and  Grodno  on  September  2d.  Lutsk  and  Dubno,  two  of  the  triangle  of  fort- 
resses protecting  Vplhynia,  fell  early  in  September.  On  September  18th  the 
Germans  entered  Vilna.  The  retiring  Russians  were  actually  surrounded  east 
of  Vilna,  but  fought  their  way  out. 

The  retreat  never  halted  until  it  brought  up  against  the  Dvina  River  from 
Riga  to  Dvinsk  in  the  north,  running  thence  south  in  a  nearly  straight  line 
through  the  Pripet  marshes,  a  little  east  of  Pinsk,  and  on  through  Volhynia  into 
Galicia.  In  the  southern  sector,  however,  the  Russians  made  an  encouraging 
rally  in  September  and  October,  and  after  defeating  the  Austrians  along  the 
Sereth,  advanced  to  the  Stripa  River,  where  they  established  a  stationary  front. 

The  Grand  Duke  Nicholas  was,  somewhat  unjustly,  removed  from  command 
and  was  succeeded  nominally  by  the  Czar  in  person,  with  the  capable  General 
Alexieff  actually  directing  the  armies  as  chief  of  staff. 

THE  BIG  PUSH 

Urgent  as  was  the  need  for  a  diversion  in  the  west,  the  Allies  were  not  able 
to  attempt  any  large-scale  movement  till  late  in  September  after  the  Russian 
debacle  was  virtually  complete.  On  September  25th,  following  a  prolonged  bom- 
bardment along  the  entire  front,  simultaneous  attacks  were  delivered  by  the 
British  a  little  north  of  Lens  and  by  the  French  on  a  25-mile  front  in  the  Cham- 
pagne. The  British  gained  the  town  of  Loos  and  other  immediate  objectives, 
but  were  unable  to  hold  their  more  advanced  ground.  The  French  carried  a 
stretch  of  territory  some  miles  deep.  At  one  point  the  Moroccans  actually 
broke  entirely  through  the  German  line,  but  the  great  object  of  starting  a 
German  retreat  failed.  The  battle  of  Loos  was  noteworthy,  however,  as  the 
first  big  test  of  the  new  British  volunteers,  Kitchener's  First  Hundred  Thou- 
sand. 

CRUSHING   OF  SERBIA 

Having  disposed  of  Russia  for  the  time  being  and  feeling  secure  in  the  west,  the 
Germans  now  turned  their  attention  to  the  punishment  of  Serbia.  They  were 
relying,  however,  not  so  much  on  their  own  forces  as  on  a  new  ally,  whom  their 
diplomacy  had  won  to  their  side.  The  Entente  nations  had  taken  it  for  granted 
that  Bulgaria,  owing  to  her  historic  debt  of  gratitude  to  Russia,  would  sympathize 
with  them.  They  misjudged  the  character  of  Czar  Ferdinand  and  the  bitterness 
of  the  Bulgarians  toward  the  Serbians  on  account  of  the  war  of  1913.  When  it 
was  realized  that  Bulgaria  was  drifting  into  German  hands,  frantic  efforts  were 
made  to  avert  the  peril.  They  were  too  late.  As  soon  as  a  German-Austrian 
force  under  Mackensen  appeared  on  the  Danube  in  late  September,  Bulgaria 
began  to  mobilize.  The  Serbians  fought  gallantly  against  the  invaders  from  the 
north  for  two  weeks,  but  when,  on  October  14th,  Bulgaria  declared  war  on 
them  and  began  an  invasion  from  the  east,  they  were  outflanked  and  helpless. 

Greece  had  a  treaty  of  alliance  with  Serbia  against  Bulgaria,  and  the  Allies 
exerted  great  pressure  to  induce  her  to  go  to  the  rescue.  The  British  offered 
the  immediate  cession  of  the  island  of  Cyprus  as  a  consideration.  Premier 
Venizelos  was  pro-Ally  and  readily  gave  the  British  and  French  permission  to 
occupy  Salonica,  where  troops  which  had  been  intended  for  Gallipoli  were 
landed  and  hurried  into  Southern  Serbia.  King  Constantine,  however,  was 
married  to  the  Kaiser's  sister  and  strongly  under  German  influence.  He  dis- 
missed Venizelos,  who  eventually  organized  a  revolutionary  government  at 
Salonica  and  declared  war  on  Bulgaria,  but  Greece  as  a  whole  did  not  enter 
the  war  until  the  abdication  of  Constantine  was  forced  in  June,  1917. 

The  occupation  of  Salonica  enabled  the  British  and  French  to  advance  up 
the  Vardar  valley  as  far  as  Gradsko,  but  they  were  too  weak  and  too  late.  The 
Italians  also  attempted  a  diversion  in  Serbia's  favor  by  attacking  strongly  along 
the  line  of  the  Isonzo,  but  diversions  were  the  only  aid  that  could  be  given  and  they 
were  not  enough.  The  Serbians,  fighting  desperately  and  with  no  thought  of  sur- 
render, could  do  no  more  than  to  beat  off  flanking  movements  which  attempted  to 


encircle  them.  A  part  of  their  army  retreated  into  Greece,  but  their  main  body 
made  a  frightful  march  across  the  mountains  through  Albania.  Thousands  died 
of  starvation  and  exposure.  The  famishing  remnant,  after  reaching  the  coast,  was 
transported  by  the  Italians  to  the  island  of  Corfu,  where  the  troops  were  reorgan- 
ized and  eventually  taken  back  to  the  Macedonian  front  to  write  a  new  and 
glorious  chapter  in  Serbian  history.  The  country  itself  remained  in  the  grip  of  the 
Austrians  and  Bulgarians  for  nearly  three  years,  enduring  frightful  oppres- 
sion. 

The  British  and  French  troops,  when  attacked  by  the  Bulgarians  in  Decem- 
ber, retired  to  the  Greek  border. 

Montenegro  and  Albania  were  in  turn  quickly  overrun  by  Austrian  forces. 

THE  SERPENT  OF  THE  SEA 

The  events  of  1915,  which  had  most  influence  on  the  outcome  of  the  war, 
though  not  in  the  way  which  the  Germans  expected,  were  the  operations  of  sub- 
marines. On  February  4th,  the  German  government  declared  all  the  waters 
around  the  British  isles  a  war  zone  and  gave  notice  that  neutral  as  well  as  enemy 
shipping  was  liable  to  be  sunk.  This  aroused  the  United  States.  The  President 
immediately  notified  Germany  that  she  would  be  held  to  "strict  accountability. ' ' 

The  seriousness  of  the  submarine  threat  soon  became  apparent  when  the  British 
steamer  "Falaba"  was  sunk  on  March  28th  in  Saint  George's  Channel,  drowning 
111  of  the  passengers  and  crew,  including  one  American.  Soon  afterward  the  Amer- 
ican steamer  "Gushing"  was  attacked  and  damaged  by  a  German  airplane  in  the 
North  Sea  and  a  little  later  the  "Gulflight"  was  torpedoed  off  the  Scilly  islands. 

The  climax  came  on  May  7th,  however,  when  the  great  passenger  liner 
"Lusitania"  was  torpedoed  off  the  south  coast  of  Ireland  with  a  loss  of  1,153 
men,  women  and  children,  of  whom  114  were  Americans.  Indignation  blazed  to 
a  white  heat.  It  was  thought  that  the  United  States  would  declare  war  at  once. 
The  President  called  on  Germany  to  disavow  the  act,  adding  that  the  United 
States  would  not  "omit  any  word  or  any  act  necessary  to  the  performance  of 
its  sacred  duty"  of  maintaining  the  rights  of  its  citizens.  The  Germans,  how- 
ever, made  a  conciliatory  answer,  and  although  the  steamer  "Nebraskan"  was 
soon  afterward  torpedoed,  but  not  sunk,  the  incident  was  allowed  to  dwindle 
into  a  series  of  inconclusive  diplomatic  notes,  only  to  flame  up  again  when,  on 
August  19th,  the  liner  "Arabic"  was  sunk  off  Ireland  with  a  loss  of  44  pas- 
sengers and  crew,  including  two  Americans. 

More  notes  followed,  culminating  on  October  5th  in  a  disavowal  by  the  Ger- 
man government  of  the  act  of  the  submarine  commander,  an  offer  to  pay  indem- 
nity and  a  promise  that  no  similar  incident  would  occur  again. 

Little  more  than  a  month  afterward,  the  "Arabic"  tragedy  was  repeated  in 
the  Mediterranean  when  the  Italian  liner  "Ancona"  was  sunk  with  a  loss  of 
more  than  200  lives,  including  nine  Americans.  The  responsibility  for  this  act, 
however,  was  assumed  by  the  Austrian  government,  which,  after  another  series 
of  notes,  duplicated  the  German  promise  and  then  broke  it  on  December  30th  by 
sinking  the  liner  "Persia"  with  a  loss  of  392  lives,  including  an  American  consul. 

Public  indignation  was  further  aroused  by  the  discovery  of  indisputable  evi- 
dence that,  while  this  controversy  was  going  on,  plots  to  foment  strikes,  destroy 
munition  plants  and  commit  other  acts  against  the  peace  of  the  United  States 
were  being  directed  from  the  German  and  Austrian  embassies.  The  recall  of 
the  Austrian  ambassador,  Dr.  Dumba,  was  demanded  in  September,  and  the 
German  military  and  naval  attaches,  Captain  Von  Papen  and  Captain  Boy-Ed, 
were  similarly  sent  home  in  December. 

Nevertheless,  the  government  accepted  the  German  word,  and  the  country 
was  kept  out  of  war  for  the  time  being,  even  refraining  from  beginning  any 
active  preparation.  The  "Lusitania"  sinking,  however,  had  turned  against  the 
Teutonic  powers  a  greater  force  than  cannon  or  armed  battalions.  It  had 
aroused  the  conscience  of  civilization.  Their  every  word  and  act  thereafter 
were  faced  by  the  silent,  accusing  fingers  of  drowned  children. 

23 


1916-THEY  DID  NOT  PASS 

IF  1914  had  raised  the  hopes  of  the  Allies  to  a  high  pitch,  the  campaigns  of  1915 
had  left  them  at  the  lowest  stage  of  depression.  While  Germany  was  as  far  as 
ever  from  overwhelming  France,  she  had  shattered  the  power  of  Russia,  con- 
quered Serbia  and  defeated  British  attacks  on  Turkey.    Any  compromise  peace 
which  she  might  secure  would  now  give  her  the  domination  of  the  entire  East,  and 
it  was  natural  that  German  diplomatic  efforts  henceforth  should  be  directed 
toward  compromise.  m  ARMENIA 

The  opening  of  1916,  however,  brought  an  Allied  success  in  a  remote  field 
which  revived  the  hope  of  Russian  recuperation.  The  Grand  Duke  Nicholas, 
after  his  removal  from  the  chief  command,  was  assigned  to  the  Caucasus  front. 
He  organized  a  brilliant  campaign  in  which  he  defeated  the  Turks  near  the  foot 
of  Mount  Ararat,  captured  Erzeroum  in  February,  Trebizond  in  April  and  by 
July  had  advanced  as  far  as  Erzingam,  occupying  all  of  Eastern  Armenia. 

The  Armenians  during  1915  had  been  the  victims  of  an  almost  unbelievable 
campaign  of  extermination  by  the  Turks  with  the  Germans  looking  on.  Out 
of  a  population  of  about  4,000,000  more  than  1,000,000  perished.  The  Russians 
were  too  late  to  save  them,  out  at  least  a  safe  dwelling  place  was  provided 
temporarily  for  those  who  had  escaped. 

BRITISH  IN   MESOPOTAMIA 

The  Russian  diversion  was  also  insufficient  to  save  the  British  force  which 
had  been  under  siege  at  Kut-el-Amara,  on  the  Tigris,  since  December  6, 1915. 
The  British  had  occupied  the  head  of  the  Persian  Gulf  early  in  1914  and  con- 
tinued to  advance  with  light  forces  up  the  Tigris,  emboldened  by  repeated 
victories,  until  by  November,  1915,  they  were  within  25  miles  of  Bagdad. 
Near  the  ruins  of  ancient  Ctesiphon,  on  November  22-24th,  they  met  a  large 
Turkish  army  and  were  obliged  to  retreat  100  miles  to  Kut-el-Amara,  where 
they  had  established  an  advanced  tase.  A  narrow  pass  between  the  river  and 
the  swamps,  a  few  miles  farther  down  the  stream,  was  fortified  by  the  Turks, 
and  repeated  efforts  of  the  British  relief  expedition  during  the  winter  failed  to 
break  through  this  obstacle.  His  troops  being  reduced  to  starvation,  therefore, 
General  Townshend,  on  April  28, 1916,  was  obliged  to  surrender  with  10,000  men. 

What  had  been  the  British  relief  army  remained  before  Sanna-y-Yat  until 
the  latter  part  of  February,  1917,  when  at  last  the  drying  of  the  flooded  areas 
enabled  it  to  outflank  and  defeat  the  Turks.  Bagdad  was  taken  two  weeks 
later,  and  the  Turks  were  driven  back  100  miles  farther,  all  of  the  lower  Tigris 
and  Euphrates  valleys  falling  into  possession  of  the  British. 

"THEY  SHALL  NOT   PASS" 

Relieved  from  any  immediate  danger  from  Russia  and  with  Serbia  conquered 
and  Turkey  secure,  the  Germans  planned  to  open  the  campaign  of  1916  in  the 
west  with  a  blow  which,  if  it  did  not  repeat  the  success  against  the  Russians, 
would,  at  least,  force  the  French  and  British  to  compromise.  The  point  selected 
for  attack  was  Verdun,  and  the  chief  command  was  given  to  the  Crown  Prince 
Friedrich  Wilhelm  that  the  expected  victory  might  reflect  more  glory  on  the 
Hohenzollern  house.  The  offensive  began  on  February  20th  and  in  the  opening 
days  made  alarming  progress.  Fort  Douaumont  was  taken  on  the  26th.  The 
attack  then  shifted  to  the  district  west  of  the  Meuse  and  during  much  of  March 
raged  around  Dead  Man's  Hill  and  Hill  304,  shifting  again  to  the  east  in  the 
latter  part  of  the  month,  when  Fort  Vaux  was  taken.  The  French,  however, 
resisted  so  stubbornly  that  the  Germans  had  only  a  few  square  miles  of  shell- 
wrecked  ground  to  show  for  their  enormous  losses,  and  this  territory  was  mostly 
recovered  in  two  or  three  swift  blows  during  the  fall  and  the  following  spring. 

THE   FAITHLESS   WORD 

Doubtless  the  German  belief  that  Verdun  would  force  the  French  and  British 
to  accept  peace  inspired  the  determination  to  resume  frightfulness  at  sea.  On 

24 


March  24th  the  Channel  steamer  "Sussex"  was  torpedoed  without  warning. 
There  were  25  Americans  on  board,  and,  though  the  ship  did  not  sink  and  all 
passengers  were  saved,  this  was  so  direct  a  violation  of  the  promise  given  to  the 
United  States  in  the  preceding  October  that  it  rekindled  the  American  war 
fever,  especially  when  it  was  followed  by  the  sinking  of  several  freighters  by 
which  American  seamen  were  lost  or  endangered.  President  Wilson  threatened 
to  sever  diplomatic  relations  unless  the  German  government  should  at  once 
abandon  these  methods  of  warfare,  but  by  the  time  Germany  was  ready  to 
reply  the  Verdun  enterprise  had  ceased  to  look  encouraging,  and  Germany  once 
more  promised  to  observe  the  principles  of  visit  and  search  and  not  to  sink 
ships  "without  warning  and  without  saving  lives."  Again  the  United  States- 
kept  out  of  war  for  the  moment  by  accepting  the  German  word. 

BATTLE  OF  JUTLAND 

It  was  not  merely  on  land,  however,  but  also  at  sea  that  Germany  undertook 
to  force  a  conclusion  in  the  spring  of  1916.  In  the  afternoon  of  May  31st  a 
squadron  of  six  British  battle  cruisers  under  Vice  Admiral  Beatty  sighted  Ger- 
man ships  on  the  horizon.  Sending  word  to  Admiral  Jellicoe,  who  was  50  miles 
astern  with  the  main  fleet,  Beatty  rushed  forward  and  soon  found  himself  con- 
fronting the  entire  German  high  seas  fleet  of  20  armor clads  and  more  than  100 
light  cruisers,  destroyers  and  submarines.  Only  the  Fifth  British  battle  squadron 
of  four  dreadnoughts  under  Rear  Admiral  Evan-Thomas  got  up  in  time  to  give 
Beatty  much  assistance.  Darkness  and  the  danger  of  mines  enabled  the  Ger- 
mans to  draw  off.  The  British  lost  three  battle  cruisers,  including  the  27,000- 
ton  dreadnought  "  Queen  Mary,"  three  armored  cruisers  and  three  destroyers. 
The  Germans  admitted  the  loss  of  one  battleship,  the  28,000-ton  battle  cruiser 
"Luetzow,"  four  light  cruisers  and  five  destroyers.  While  in  tonnage  and  lives 
the  British  loss  was  the  greater,  the  actual  damage  to  the  German  fleet  and  its 
morale  was  evidently  much  more  severe  than  was  acknowledged.  In  its  results 
this  battle  was  certainly  decisive  in  favor  of  British  sea  power,  for  the  German 
fleet  never  again  emerged  into  the  North  Sea  until  it  came  out  to  surrender. 

A  STAB  IN  THE  BACK 

The  most  unreasoned  incident  of  the  entire  war  was  the  outbreak  on  April  24th 
of  a  rebellion  in  Dublin,  Ireland,  under  the  direction  of  the  Irish  independence 
society  called  the  Sinn  Fein.  Much  damage  was  done  and  many  lives  were  sacri- 
ficed in  the  week  that  the  uprising  lasted.  Sir  Roger  Casement,  who  had  been  in 
Germany  from  the  beginning  of  the  war  and  had  evidently  inspired  his  friends  in 
Ireland  with  the  German  belief  that  Verdun  was  to  win  the  war,  was  arrested 
soon  after  landing  from  a  German  submarine.  He  was  later  executed,  as  were 
fifteen  of  the  Sinn  Fein  leaders.  The  others  after  a  short  imprisonment  were 
granted  amnesty. 

THIRD   BATTLE   OF  YPRES 

Probably  with  the  purpose  of  preventing  the  British  from  aiding  the  French 
at  Verdun,  the  Germans  on  June  2d  opened  an  offensive  southeast  of  Ypres. 
The  sector  attacked  was  held  mainly  by  the  Canadians,  who  suffered  very 
heavy  losses.  They  gave  some  ground  at  first,  but  at  the  end  of  two  weeks  had 
entirely  recovered  it.  The  Princess  Patricia's  Canadian  Light  Infantry  was 
virtually  annihilated  in  this  action. 

BATTLE   OF  THE   SOMME 

The  British,  however,  under  Sir  Douglas  Haig,  had  been  preparing  a  blow 
which  should  not  only  end  the  pressure  on  Verdun,  but  should  turn  the  tide  of 
war  in  the  west.  On  July  1st,  after  a  bombardment  of  nearly  two  weeks 
they,  with  the  co-operation  of  a  French  army  on  their  right,  assaulted 
the  German  lines  on  both  sides  of  the  Somme  Canal.  Both  the  British 
and  French  broke  through  along  the  canal  and  then,  facing  to  the  north,  began 
a  gruelling  drive  against  the  exposed  end  of  the  German  line.  The  campaign 

25 


lasted  till  well  into  the  fall.  Every  village,  wood  and  farm  had  been  converted 
by  the  Germans  into  a  fortress.  These  had  to  be  taken  inch  by  inch. 

September  15th  marked  the  introduction  of  a  new  invention — the  "tank,"  a 
heavily  armored  traction  engine  which  climbed  over  ditches  and  lumbered 
across  any  ordinary  obstacle,  spraying  death  from  its  machine  guns  as  it 
advanced.  In  the  first  tank  attack  the  British  took  the  villages  of  Flers,  Mar- 
tinpuich  and  Courcelette.  This  engine  became  the  most  important  new  inven- 
tion for  use  on  land  that  was  developed  during  the  war,  and  the  Germans  never 
were  able  to  match  it. 

The  battle  was  drowned  out  by  the  mud  of  late  November  with  the  British 
in  possession  of  Combles  and  Thiepval  and  the  French  commanding  ruined 
Peronne.  If  it  had  not  forced  a  general  retreat,  it  had  reversed  the  high  hopes 
with  which  the  Germans  had  begun  the  year  in  the  west. 

BRUSILOFF'S  OFFENSIVE 

The  confidence  that  the  Russians  could  recover  from  the  disasters  of  1915 
was  supported  early  in  June  by  the  opening  of  an  offensive  from  the  Pripet 
marshes  to  the  Roumanian  border.  The  fortresses  of  Lutsk  and  Dubno  were 
recovered,  Czernowitz  was  taken,  all  of  Bukowina  was  occupied,  the  Austrian 
line  in  Eastern  Galicia  was  shattered  and  driven  back,  and  by  early  September 
the  Russians  were  before  Halicz,  triumphant,  with  nearly  half  of  Galicia  again 
in  their  possession  and  Lemberg  in  imminent  danger.  Here,  however,  the  cam- 
paign stopped,  probably  because  the  supplies  which  had  been  accumulated  for 
it  were  running  low.  GQRIZIA  AND  TRE  CARSO 

The  German  offensive  plans  for  the  spring  included  a  drive  by  the  Austrians 
against  the  Italians  in  the  Trentino.  It  opened  on  May  15th  and  by  the  27th 
had  taken  Asiago.  Here  it  was  stopped. 

In  August,  the  Italians  countered  on  the  Isonzo,  taking  Gorizia  and  the  Carso 
plateau,  a  formidable  obstacle,  the  assault  on  which  was  like  scaling  the  walls  of  a 
five-story  house.  ROUMANIA.S  HOPE  AND  SORR0W 

Encouraged  by  these  successes  and  by  the  promise  that  a  large  Russian  army 
would  support  her,  Roumania,  on  August  28th,  declared  war  on  Austria- 
Hungary.  Roumania's  case  was  much  like  Italy's.  She  sought  the  redemption 
of  the  Roumanian  population  which  made  up  most  of  the  inhabitants  of  the 
Hungarian  province  of  Transylvania.  Concentrating  on  their  western  front, 
the  Roumanians  swept  across  the  mountains  and  captured  Kronstadt  and 
Hermanstadt.  Meanwhile,  however,  their  southern  front  was  left  weakly 
guarded.  Hindenburg  had  become  chief  of  the  German  staff.  He  sent  Falken- 
hayn,  his  predecessor,  to  command  the  Austro-Hungarians  on  the  Roumanian 
western  front  and  Mackensen  to  direct  a  blow  from  the  Bulgarian  side.  The 
promised  Russian  army,  which  was  to  have  swept  into  Bulgaria,  amounted  to 
only  a  few  weak  divisions,  and  they  arrived  late.  This  was  the  first  evidence  of 
Russian  treason.  The  Roumanians  were  beaten  in  the  Dobrudja  and  by  late 
October  had  lost  their  seaport,  Constansa.  Falkenhayn  drove  them  back  across 
the  mountains,  defeated  them  first  at  the  Vulcan  pass,  then  at  Tirgu-Juil  and, 
finally,  in  December,  along  the  line  of  the  Argechu  River.  Bucharest  was  taken 
on  December  6th.  The  campaign  closed  with  the  Roumanian  army,  shattered 
but  still  plucky,  holding  a  short  front  along  the  southern  border  of  Moldavia. 

MONASTIR  RECOVERED 

To  aid  the  Roumanians  an  attack  on  the  western  part  of  the  Macedonian  front 
was  delivered,  mainly  by  the  Serbian  troops.  Monastir  was  taken  on  November 
19th,  but  the  Teutonic  forces  could  not  be  driven  far  enough  back  to  put  the  city 
out  of  range  of  their  guns,  which  continued  to  shell  it  for  the  next  year  and  a  half. 

The  death  of  Emperor  Francis  Joseph  of  Austria-Hungary  on  November 
21st  and  the  succession  of  Lloyd-George  as  premier  of  Britain  in  place  of  Mr. 
Asquith  were  two  important  governmental  changes  that  closed  the  year. 

26 


1917-THE  YANKS  ARE  COMING 

THE  battle  cry  of  the  French  poilus  at  Verdun,  "They  shall  not  pass,"  was 
descriptive  of  the  entire  war  in  1916.    Not  only  at  Verdun,  but  at  Ypres, 
in  the  North  Sea  and  in  the  Italian  Trentino,  they  did  not  pass.   And  the 
successful  counter-blows  on  the  Somme,  in  Galicia  and  the  Caucasus  and  on 
the  Isonzo  gave  offensive  emphasis  to  the  power  of  the  Allies.  Nowhere  except 
in  the  detached  campaign  against  Roumania  had  the  Germans  been  able  to 
repeat  their  successes  of  1915.  If  the  Russians  could  have  continued  to  develop 
the  recuperative  strength  which  they  had  shown  in  1916,  the  campaigns  of  1917 
might  well  have  brought  a  decisive  Allied  victory.  But  intrigue  and  treachery 
had  been  at  work  in  Russia. 

THREE  TIMES  AND  OUT 

It  was  probably  a  knowledge  of  the  successes  of  their  agents  in  Russia  and  an 
expectation  that  the  betrayal  of  Roumania  was  to  be  followed  by  a  separate 
peace  with  the  Czar's  government  which  gave  the  Germans  confidence  to 
break  their  word  to  the  United  States  for  the  third  time.  On  January  31st, 
they  gave  notice  that  after  February  1st  they  would  resume  submarine  ruth- 
lessness.  This  was  a  contemptuous  violation  of  both  the  " Sussex"  and  the 
"Arabic"  pledges  as  well  as  of  a  special  pledge,  given  in  the  "Frye"  case,  not 
to  sink  American  ships.  The  Germans  may  have  believed  that  the  influence  of 
their  friends  in  American  politics  and  the  strong  pacifist  sentiment  in  the 
Southern  and  Western  parts  of  the  country,  which  in  the  winter  of  1916  had 
nearly  put  through  Congress  the  McLemore  resolution  forbidding  Americans 
to  travel  on  foreign  ships  and  had  made  a  powerful  appeal  for  an  embargo  on 
the  export  of  munitions,  would  prevent  the  United  States  from  entering  the 
war  under  any  provocation.  They  undoubtedly  thought  that,  in  any  event, 
the  United  States,  having  made  no  preparation,  would  be  unable  to  send  troops 
to  Europe  in  time  to  give  effective  help  to  the  Allies,  and  that  might  well  have  hap- 
pened, if  a  separate  peace  with  Russia  in  the  spring  of  1917  had  permitted  Germany 
to  make  the  concentration  on  the  western  front  which  she  effected  a  year  later. 

This  time  the  Germans  did  not  attempt  to  hold  off  the  United  States  with 
diplomatic  notes  and  new  promises,  although  given  ample  opportunity  to  do 
so.  President  Wilson,  when  he  severed  diplomatic  relations  on  February  3d, 
still  declared  his  unwillingness  to  believe  that  the  Germans  would  actually  do 
as  they  threatened.  The  sinking  of  'several  ships,  including  two  American 
merchantmen  and  the  liner  "Laconia,"  by  which  three  American  lives  were 
lost,  removed  all  doubt  on  that  point.  Feeling  was  further  intensified 
by  the  discovery  of  a  secret  message  from  the  German  foreign  minister,  Zim- 
mermann,  to  the  German  minister  to  Mexico,  directing  him  to  propose  to 
Mexico  an  alliance  with  Germany  against  the  United  States  and  that  Mexico 
should  conquer  Texas,  Arizona  and  New  Mexico  and  should  attempt  to  draw 
Japan  into  the  plan.  The  President  then,  on  February  26th,  proposed  a  resort 
to  "armed  neutrality,"  asking  authority  to  arm  American  ships  for  defense, 
but  again  expressed  the  hope  that  it  would  "not  be  necessary  to  put  armed 
forces  anywhere  into  action."  The  opposition  of  twelve  senators  prevented  the 
granting  of  this  authority  before  the  expiration  of  Congress  on  March  4th,  but 
the  President  proceeded  to  arm  merchant  ships  under  his  general  powers  and 
called  a  special  session  of  Congress  to  meet  on  April  2d.  More  ships  had  been 
sunk  in  the  meantime,  and  there  was  no  further  hesitation.  When  the  President 
asked  Congress  to  declare  war,  however,  he  based  his  action,  not  alone  on  the 
special  grievances  of  the  United  States,  but  on  the  general  course  of  the  German 
government,  which  he  called  a  "challenge  to  all  mankind."  He  denounced  the 
German  autocracy  as  "the  natural  foe  of  liberty"  and  asked  for  action  because 
"the  world  must  be  made  safe  for  democracy." 

The  declaration  of  war  was  adopted  on  April  6th  with  six  opposition  votes  in 
the  senate  and  50  in  the  house. 

27 


In  addition  to  providing  for  a  large  increase  in  the  Regular  army  and  National 
Guard  by  voluntary  enlistment,  a  general  conscription  of  all  men  between  the 
ages  of  21  and  31  was  ordered.  Money  was  raised  by  popular  bond  issue,  and 
war  activities  began  on  an  enormous  scale.  A  naval  contingent  reached  Great 
Britain  on  May  4th  and  at  once  began  patrol  work  against  submarines.  General 
John  G.  Pershing  was  appointed  to  command  the  army.  He  landed  in  France 
with  his  staff  on  June  13th.  The  first  contingent  of  regular  troops  arrived  on 
the  26th.  More  than  a  year  passed,  however,  before  the  United  States  began 
to  take  an  active  part  at  the  front. 

OUR  INFECTIOUS  EXAMPLE 

Cuba  followed  the  course  of  the  United  States  at  once.  Brazil  immediately 
severed  diplomatic  relations,  but  did  not  declare  war  till  October.  Bolivia, 
Peru,  Uruguay,  Ecuador  and  Santo  Domingo  either  severed  diplomatic 
relations  or  otherwise  indicated  their  sympathy  with  the  United  States. 
Siam  declared  war  in  July,  and  China  in  August.  Panama,  Hayti,  Guatemala, 
Costa  Rica,  Honduras  and  Nicaragua  all  declared  war.  Even  the  little  negro 
republic  of  Liberia  came  in.  The  world  was  at  war. 

A  FLASH  AND   DARKNESS 

Meanwhile,  startling  events  had  been  happening  in  Russia.  The  extent  to 
which  the  ministers  who  controlled  the  Czar  had  committed  themselves  to  a 
separate  peace  with  Germany  is  uncertain,  but  there  is  no  question  that  the 
government  had  fallen  into  the  hands  of  a  reactionary  group  of  bureaucrats 
and  that  German  intrigue  had  made  great  headway  with  them.  It  is  equally 
certain  that  the  leaders  of  the  army  and  the  douma  were  strongly  patriotic. 
The  army  was  being  supported  mostly  by  the  organization  of  zemstvoes.  The 
government,  from  incompetence  or  treachery  or  both,  had  completely  broken 
down.  The  people  were  starving  and  were  becoming  riotous. 

The  Czar  was  summoned  from  his  staff  headquarters  at  Moghileff.  When  the 
meeting  of  the  council  at  which  he  presided  adjourned,  he  had  given  his  royal 
word  that  before  he  slept  that  night  he  would  sign  edicts  granting  to  Russia  a 
responsible  ministry  and  a  constitution.  That  night  he  was  privately  visited 
by  Protopopoff,  minister  of  the  interior  and  credited  with  being  the  head  of  the 
German  influence  since  the  murder  of  the  mystic  monk  Rasputin  a  few  weeks 
before.  He  had  as  an  ally  the  Czarina,  a  German  woman  and  relative  of  the 
Kaiser,  who  was  probably  chiefly  responsible  for  what  followed.  Instead  of  the 
promised  edicts,  there  was  published  a  decree  dissolving  the  douma  and  order- 
ing General  Ivanoff,  a  staunch  imperialist,  to  Petrograd  "to  take  over  all 
power  of  administration  as  dictator." 

There  was  no  further  attempt  at  compromise.  The  douma  refused  to  dis- 
perse. A  provisional  government  was  organized.  The  populace  raged  in  the 
streets,  but  the  soldiers,  in  the  main,  refused  to  oppose  the  people,  as  did  their 
commander,  General  Korniloff.  It  was  not  by  resolutions  of  the  douma  poli- 
ticians or  by  demonstrations  of  mobs,  however,  that  revolution  was  really 
effected,  but  by  the  decision  of  the  army  chiefs.  Brusiloff  at  once  telegraphed 
his  adherence  to  the  revolutionary  government,  Korniloff  placed  the  Czarina 
under  arrest,  and  it  was  Ruzsky,  commander  of  the  northern  front,  who  stopped 
the  Czar's  train  at  Pskoff,  where,  on  March  15th,  the  autocrat  of  all  the  Russias, 
was  compelled  to  sign  his  abdication.  To  these  three  brilliant  leaders  of  the 
1914-16  campaigns,  the  Allied  world  owes  a  debt  of  gratitude  which  it  has  ill 
appreciated.  Their  adherence  and  that  of  Alexieff,  the  chief  of  staff,  gave  to  the 
revolution  the  physical  power  which  made  resistance  useless.  They  may  have 
had  little  interest  in  internal  reforms,  but  they  knew  that  the  army  was  being 
betrayed  to  the  enemy.  Whatever  motives  may  have  inspired  others,  theirs 
were  the  acts  of  men  devoted  to  the  Allied  cause.  It  is  a  melancholy  reflection 
that,  like  many  other  Russian  army  officers,  they  soon  afterward  became  martyrs. 

The  Russian  revolution  delayed  for  nearly  a  year  the  separate  peace  on  which 
the  Germans  undoubtedly  had  counted,  but  the  new  regime  afforded  fertile 

28 


ground  for  the  Germans  to  work  in  a  different  way.  The  minister  of  justice  was 
an  impractical  Socialist  orator  named  Kerensky.  One  of  his  first  decrees,  which 
was  distributed  directly  to  the  soldiers  without  the  knowledge  of  the  officers, 
broke  down  discipline  at  a  stroke.  Fraternization  opened  wide  the  doors  to 
German  agents,  and  from  the  tenements  of  New  York  and  Chicago  and  the 
exile  colonies  of  Switzerland  came  a  horde  of  still  more  dangerous  enemies, 
mysteriously  risen  from  poverty  to  comparative  affluence,  who  were  soon  to 
take  the  name,  Bolsheviki. 

Nevertheless,  Brusiloff  opened  an  offensive  in  Galicia  in  July,  and  at  the  start 
made  encouraging  progress.  Only  a  few  of  the  troops,  however,  were  reliable. 
Most  of  them  began  to  hold  meetings  of  soldiers'  committees  to  debate  whether 
they  should  obey  commands.  The  counter-blow  gave  the  Germans,  for  the  first 
time  in  the  war,  the  satisfaction  of  seeing  an  army  flee  before  them  in  disor- 
ganized rout,  abandoning  cannon  and  supplies.  All  Galicia  was  lost.  Brusiloff 
resigned,  broken-hearted. 

Korniloff,  who  was  appointed  to  succeed  him,  within  a  month  attempted  to 
overthrow  Kerensky,  who  had  now  become  dictator.  His  soldiers  would  not 
support  him  and  he  was  arrested.  Two  months  later  it  was  Kerensky's  turn  to 
fall  before  the  forces  which  his  folly  had  developed,  and  the  Bolsheviki  under 
Lenine  and  Trotzky  were  in  power. 

Documentary  evidence  was  afterward  published  by  the  United  States  bureau 
of  information  showing  that  the  Bolshevist  leaders  were  receiving  German 
money  and  directions  from  the  German  staff.  The  situation  was  now  in  the 
hands  of  the  Germans,  but  they  chose  to  play  with  it  for  a  time.  Even  after  an 
armistice  was  signed  and  the  Bolsheviki  had  proclaimed  the  end  of  the  war,  the 
Germans  attacked  them  and  drove  them  from  the  Baltic  provinces.  The  Ger- 
mans might  have  entered  Petrograd  had  they  chosen.  They  imposed  new  peace 
terms  which  provided  for  the  break-up  of  Russia  into  a  number  of  states,  the  sur- 
render of  the  western  part  of  the  country  and  the  payment  of  a  large  indemnity. 

The  Ukrainians,  who  had  been  subjected  to  an  independence  propaganda 
directed  from  Germany  since  the  beginning  of  the  war,  anticipated  the  Bol- 
sheviki by  a  few  days  in  making  their  separate  peace  and  were  rewarded  by 
having  their  entire  country  immediately  occupied  and  plundered  by  German 
and  Austrian  troops  under  pretense  of  protecting  them  from  the  Bolsheviki. 

Deserted  Roumania  had  no  choice  but  to  sign  such  terms  of  peace  as  she 
could  get.  Finland  accepted  the  Germans. 

Siberia  was  saved  by  some  thousands  of  Czecho-Slovaks,  who  had  gone  over 
from  the  Austrian  to  the  Russian  side  early  in  the  war  and  who  now  successfully 
resisted  the  attempt  of  the  Bolsheviki  to  deliver  them  to  Austria.  To  aid  them, 
the  Japanese  with  small  American  and  British  contingents  landed  at  Vladi- 
vostok and  during  August  and  September,  1918,  occupied  Eastern  Siberia.  A 
small  British  and  American  force  was  also  landed  at  Archangel  in  August,  1918, 
to  prevent  supplies,  accumulated  there,  from  falling  into  the  hands  of  the  Ger- 
mans. Although  no  insult,  aggression  or  appeal  of  self-interest  had  been  able 
to  induce  the  Lenine-Trotzky  government  to  offer  any  resistance  to  the  Ger- 
mans, they  met  these  moves  by  promptly  declaring  that  a  state  of  war  existed 
with  the  Entente  governments  and  the  United  States,  and  in  the  north  they 
organized  under  German  officers  a  strong  resistance,  which  was  continued  even 
after  Germany  had  given  up. 

These  later  events  in  Russia,  however,  had  little  effect  on  the  war  as  a  whole. 
From  the  day  of  the  accession  of  the  Bolsheviki  Russia  ceased  to  be  a  factor  in 
the  war  for  human  liberty,  except  as  she  became  a  hostile  factor. 

"THE   EMPIRE   OF  DEATH" 

The  battle  of  the  Somme  had  been  brought  to  a  halt  by  rain  and  mud  in  the 
fall  of  1916,  but  it  had  pierced  the  German  front  so  far  as  to  make  the  line 
between  Arras  and  the  river  Oise  no  longer  tenable.  During  the  winter  Hinden- 
burg  caused  a  new  line  of  trenches  and  entanglements  to  be  built,  mostly  by  the 

29 


forced  labor  of  Belgian  and  French  civilians  and  of  prisoners.  It  curved  south- 
east from  Arras,  running  a  little  west  of  Cambrai,  Saint  Quentin  and  La  Fere 
till  it  joined  the  old  line  on  the  Ailette.  Before  retiring,  the  Germans  syste- 
matically devastated  the  entire  country  between  their  old  and  new  fronts  —  a 
strip  six  to  eight  miles  wide.  Every  village  and  farm  were  burned  or  blown  up, 
wells  were  poisoned,  even  the  fruit  and  shade  trees  were  cut  down.  The  able- 
bodied  inhabitants  of  both  sexes  were  carried  off  into  slavery  and  only  a  few 
starving  old  men,  women  and  children,  pillaged  even  of  the  scanty  supplies 
which  the  Allied  relief  commission  had  given  them,  were  left  behin'cl.  It  was  a  Ger- 
man correspondent  who  gloatingly  described  this  region  as"  the  empire  of  death." 

VIMY  RIDGE 

The  Allies  detected  the  German  withdrawal  late  in  February,  but  the  devas- 
tation was  such  that  more  than  a  month  was  required  to  occupy  the  abandoned 
country  and  all  of  the  following  summer  to  reconstruct  it  sufficiently  to  permit 
military  operations  against  the  Hindenburg  line.  The  British  preparation  for 
a  spring  offensive,  however,  had  not  been  on  the  Somme  sector,  but  farther 
north,  between  Arras  and  Lens.  Here  they  opened  a  brilliant  attack  on  April 
9th.  carrying  Vimy  ridge  in  a  single  magnificent  rush  and  towns  farther  east 
in  the  succeeding  days,  including  the  city  of  Lievin,  the  western  suburb  of  Lens. 

NIVELLE'S  OFFENSIVE 

At  about  the  same  time  the  French  began  the  second  battle  of  the  Aisne. 
The  chief  command  of  the  French  armies  had  passed  in  the  preceding  December 
from  General  Joffre  to  General  Robert  Nivelle,  who  had  won  great  fame  at 
Verdun.  It  was  he  who  directed  this  battle.  The  entire  German  first  line  was 
taken  in  the  opening  rush,  and  in  the  succeeding  three  weeks  the  French  cap- 
tured such  strong  points  as  Vailly,  Fort  de  Conde,  Craonne  and,  finally,  the 
greater  part  of  the  Chemin  des  Dames,  driving  the  Germans  back  to  the  Ailette 
River.  Although  his  success  had  been  brilliant  and  he  appeared  on  the  eve  of 
still  greater  triumphs,  Nivelle  was  removed  from  command,  nominally  because 
his  losses  had  been  so  heavy  as  to  alarm  the  government  lest  his  rashness  should 
exhaust  French  man-power.  He  was  succeeded  by  the  very  competent  General 
Petain,  who,  after  resting  and  reforming  his  armies  during  the  summer,  resumed 
the  attack  in  October,  taking  Fort  de  Malmaison  and  completing  the  conquest 
of  the  Chemin  des  Dames.  With  these  exceptions,  no  important  operations  were 
attempted  by  the  French  during  1917. 

MESSINES  AND  YPRES 

Marshal  Haig  continued  the  tactics  which  had  proved  so  successful  at  Vimy 
by  attacking  Messines  ridge,  north  of  Armentieres,  on  June  9th.  The  German 
positions  had  been  mined  and  the  explosion  was  so  tremendous  that  it  was 
heard  as  far  away  as  London.  The  ridge  was  easily  carried. 

The  British  then  shifted  their  concentration  still  farther  to  the  north  and  on 
July  31st  began  the  fourth  battle  of  Ypres.  The  plan  here  followed  was  to  strike 
for  limited  objectives,  organize  the  positions  gained,  advance  the  artillery  and 
after  a  sufficient  interval  repeat  the  operation.  No  less  than  twelve  of  these 
separate  attacks  were  made  along  the  great  curving  front  of  the  Ypres  salient 
between  July  and  November.  The  British  invariably  gained  ground  and  by 
November  6th  they  had  taken  Passchendaele,  the  last  high  ground  remaining 
to  the  Germans  in  Belgian  Flanders,  but  the  season  was  now  too  late  to  admit 
of  further  progress. 


DEATR  smps  op  TRE 

An  epochal  incident  occurred  on  October  20th,  when  five  German  Zeppelins, 
returning  from  a  bombing  raid  on  London,  were  brought  down  by  British  and 
French  airplanes.  This  marked  the  inglorious  end  of  an  instrument  of  warfare 
on  which  the  Germans  had  counted  greatly  at  the  beginning  of  the  war,  since 
it  appealed  particularly  to  their  hope  that  they  could  gain  the  submission  of 
their  enemies  by  ruthless  destruction  of  non-combatant  life  and  property.  The 

30 


Zeppelins  did  frightful  work  among  civilians,  but  they  were  merely  murder 
machines  of  little  military  use,  and  the  chances  of  a  terrible  death  for  the  crews 
soon  became  greater  than  the  prospects  of  gaining  any  advantage  by  using 
them.  The  exact  number  destroyed  is  uncertain,  but  the  Allies  had  records  of 
at  least  sixteen  prior  to  this  sensational  event  of  October  20th. 

ITALY'S   GREAT   TRIAL 

If  the  Russian  revolution  delayed  German  plans  for  an  offensive  concentra- 
tion in  the  west,  the  triumph  of  the  Bolsheviki  came  early  enough  to  enable  the 
Germans  to  spare  forces  for  an  attempt  to  crush  Italy.  The  Italians  had  begun 
an  offensive  on  the  Isonzo  in  May,  which  gained  some  ground,  and  heavy 
fighting  occurred  all  along  the  Italian  front  during  most  of  the  summer.  In 
August  they  made  their  greatest  effort  of  the  war  up  to  that  time.  They  crossed 
the  Isonzo  above  Gorizia .  and  in  six  days  of  terrific  fighting  expelled  the  Aus- 
trians  from  the  supposedly  impregnable  Bainsizza  plateau,  taking  the  dominat- 
ing peak  of  Monte  Santo.  Monte  San  Gabriele  was  taken  three  weeks  later,  and 
it  appeared  that  the  Italians  not  only  had  Trieste  in  their  grasp,  but  would 
break  completely  through  to  Laibach. 

The  Germans,  however,  were  preparing  a  terrible  counter-stroke.  It  fell  on 
October  21st  at  Caporetta,  near  Tolmino.  Not  only  had  the  Italian  leaders 
failed  to  detect  the  concentration  of  German  troops  on  this  sector,  in  place  of 
the  less  formidable  Austrians  who  had  hitherto  opposed  them,  but  they  had 
also  been  unable  to  prevent  the  undermining  of  their  own  morale  by  the  same 
kind  of  Socialist  propaganda  which  the  Germans  had  employed  with  such  suc- 
cess in  Russia.  It  was  said  that  the  fraternizing  soldiers  had  reached  a  compact 
that  neither  side  would  obey  orders  to  fight  the  other.  Only  the  Italians  kept  the 
agreement,  and  some  2  50,000  of  them  paid  the  penalty  by  death  or  imprisonment. 

The  disaster  appeared  overwhelming.  Not  only  were  the  Italians  forced  to 
abandon  the  Bainsizza  and  Carso  plateaus  and  Gorizia,  but  they  were  driven 
back  across  the  Venetian  plain,  first  to  the  Tagliamento  River,  and  then  to  the 
Piave.  It  appeared  that  Italy  must  suffer  Russia's  fate.  Yet,  without  assistance, 
in  a  battle  on  the  Piave  only  three  weeks  after  their  rout,  the  Italians  brought 
the  invaders  to  a  stand.  This  was  one  of  the  most  marvelous  rallies  in  military 
history.  It  was  Italy's  battle  of  the  Marne,  but  in  some  respects  an  even  greater 
achievement,  since  the  Italians  had  suffered  a  much  more  serious  defeat  than 
the  French  and  British  had  endured  prior  to  the  Marne. 

Following  this  event,  the  United  States,  on  December  7th,  came  to  the  sup- 
port of  Italy  by  declaring  war  on  Austria-Hungary. 

ALLENBY'S  CRUSADE 

The  most  brilliant  campaign  of  the  year  was  fought  in  Palestine.  After  the 
conquest  of  Serbia  and  the  withdrawal  of  the  British  from  Gallipoli,  the  Ger- 
mans entertained  high  hopes  of  carrying  the  war  into  Egypt.  Adopting  the 
maxim  that  the  best  defense  is  a  strong  offensive,  the  British  moved  out  into 
the  desert  of  Sinai  and  after  several  sharp  actions  crossed  it.  They  were  obliged 
to  construct  a  railroad  and  water-supply  system  as  they  advanced,  but  by  the 
end  of  October  they  had  accumulated  a  sufficient  force  under  General  Allenby 
to  attack  Gaza  and  Beersheba.  Both  places  were  carried.  Jaffa  fell  soon  after- 
ward, and  on  December  10th  Jerusalem  was  occupied.  The  task  which  had 
baffled  the  Lion-hearted  Richard  seven  centuries  before  was  accomplished. 

CAMBRAI 

To  offset  the  Italian  disaster,  the  British  on  November  1st  made  their  first 
attack  on  the  Hindenburg  line  before  Cambrai.  The  line  was  fairly  pierced,  but 
by  counter-attacks  during  the  next  two  weeks  the  Germans  rebuilt  their  front, 
leaving  the  British  in  a  sharp  salient. 

The  accession  of  Georges  Clemenceau  to  the  premiership  of  France  in  No- 
vember brought  new  vigor  to  the  conduct  of  the  French  government. 

31 


1918— IT'S  OVER,  OVER  THERE 

Italian  disaster  had  been  the  only  reverse  to  Allied  arms  in  1917,  but  the 
I  peace  with  the  Russians  now  enabled  the  Germans  to  mass  their  forces  on  the 
-*-  western  front,  as  they  had  expected  to  do  the  year  before.  There  appeared 
still  to  be  ample  time,  as  the  United  States  had  sent  less  than  300,000  men  to 
France  and  had  not  even  produced  enough  rifles  and  machine  guns  to  arm  its 
levies,  while  it  had  hardly  begun  to  turn  out  cannon,  airplanes  and  other  impor- 
tant material.  The  actual  direction  of  the  German  armies  now  passed  to  the  Quar- 
termaster General, Von  Ludendorff,  although  Hindenburg  remained  chief  of  staff. 

DISASTER  IN  PICARDY 

The  great  offensive,  of  which  the  Allies  had  received  only  the  vaguest  warning, 
started  on  March  21st  against  the  Fifth  British  army  under  General  Gough  near 
La  Fere.  Gough's  army  broke  under  the  blow.  Its  retreat  forced  it  toward  the 
north  and  opened  a  steadily  widening  gap  between  the  British  and  French.  But  the 
British  General  Carey  rallied  a  nondescript  force  of  army  workmen,  cooks,  attend- 
ants and  others,  including  an  American  battalion  of  railroad  track-layers,  who 
became  the  first  American  troops  actually  to  get  into  battle.  With  the  co-opera- 
tion of  the  French  General  Fayolle,  the  gap  was  thus  closed,  but  the  Germans 
in  seven  days  had  swept  over  the  entire  territory  abandoned  the  year  before 
and  had  passed  the  old  front  of  1914-16,  taking  both  Albert  and  Montdidier. 

BATTLE  OF  ARRAS 

The  salient  into  which  they  had  entered,  however,  was  too  narrow.  For  the 
purpose  of  widening  it  they  faced  toward  the  north  and  on  the  28th  struck 
heavily  south  of  Arras.  If  the  British  had  given  way  there,  the  entire  front 
must  have  collapsed,  and  the  Germans  could  have  driven  on  to  Amiens,  if  not 
to  the  sea,  separating  the  French  and  British  armies.  But  the  British  held. 

A  successful  attack  by  the  French  between  Lassigny  and  Noyon  further 
narrowed  the  salient,  and  while  the  Germans  made  more  attacks  on  both  its 
sides  and  its  apex,  they  could  not  enlarge  it. 

GENERALISSIMO  FOCH 

The  disaster  had  the  effect  of  bringing  the  Allies  at  last  to  adopt  the  plan,  long 
under  discussion,  of  putting  all  their  armies  under  a  unified  command,  and  the 
French  General  Ferdinand  Foch  was  chosen  for  this  leadership.  Henceforth  the 
armies  of  all  the  Allied  nations  were  handled  strategically  as  a  single  force. 

BACKS  TO  THE  WALL 

After  a  short  advance  against  the  French  south  of  Chauny,  intended  probably 
to  deceive  the  Allies  as  to  where  the  next  blow  was  to  fall,  the  Germans  on  April 
9th  struck  again  on  the  front  before  Armentieres.  The  Portuguese  division, 
which  was  the  first  to  receive  the  blow,  broke.  Armentieres  and  the  Messines 
ridge  were  taken,  and  on  the  12th,  Marshal  Haig  told  his  troops  that  they  were 
fighting  with  their  backs  to  the  wall  and  must  hold  at  all  costs.  Nevertheless, 
the  Germans  took  Mont  Kemmel  and  Bailleul,  driving  a  salient  fifteen  miles 
deep  up  the  valley  of  the  Lys  River,  before  they  were,  finally,  brought  to  a  halt 
on  the  29th.  The  arrival  at  a  critical  moment  of  a  French  reinforcement 
demonstrated  the  value  of  the  unified  command. 

To  shorten  their  front  and  protect  their  flank,  the  British  were  obliged  to 
retire  from  all  the  ground  before  Ypres  which  they  had  won  in  the  preceding 
fall,  but  they  still  held  the  ruined  city. 

ZEEBRUGGE  AND  POLA 

A  brilliant  naval  raid  by  the  British  on  the  23d,  which  blocked  the  harbor 
of  Zeebrugge  and  partially  blocked  Ostend,  and  a  similar  enterprise  by  the 
Italians  on  May  16th,  by  which  an  Austrian  battleship  was  sunk  in  the  harbor 
of  Pola,  demonstrated  that  the  Allies  were  still  masters  of  the  sea,  at  least. 


DARKEST   DAYS   OF  ALL 

But  the  worst  blow  fell  on  May  27th  along  the  Chemin  des  Dames,  when  the 
Germans  in  a  single  rush,  not  only  carried  the  whole  of  that  position,  but  swept 
on  across  the  Aisne  and  the  Ourcq.  In  five  days  they  were  again  on  the  Marne. 
Chateau  Thierry  was  taken  on  June  2d  and  the  Marne  was  crossed  in  force. 
The  road  to  Paris  had  apparently  been  opened.  Never  before  or  afterward 
during  the  entire  war  were  French  troops  so  completely  broken. 

THE  "DEVIL  DOGS" 

But  the  events  of  the  spring  had  at  last  aroused  the  United  States  to  a  realiza- 
tion of  what  it  had  to  do,  and  there  had  been  rushed  into  France  forces  on  which 
the  Germans  had  little  reckoned.  France  was  furnishing  cannon  and  airplanes; 
Britain  was  supplying  ships.  As  many  as  300,000  American  troops  per  month 
had  been  landing  in  France,  and  the  reserves  and  replacements  necessary  to 
enable  the  units  which  had  been  longest  trained  to  take  the  field  were  at  last 
available.  The  Americans  had  repulsed  several  German  trench  raids,  notably  at 
Seicheprey  on  April  20th,  and  on  May  29th  the  First  American  division  had 
delivered  a  successful  local  offensive  at  Cantigny,  near  Montdidier. 

The  time  had  come  to  put  them  to  the  supreme  test.  On  June  2d  the  Fifth 
and  Sixth  regiments  of  marines  arrived  before  Chateau  Thierry  and  on  the  6th 
and  7th  they  sustained  and  repulsed  an  attack  by  the  Prussian  Guard.  Taking 
the  offensive  on  the  10th  and  llth,  they  drove  forward  into  Belleau  Wood,  and 
by  the  13th  the  Germans  realized  that  for  the  moment,  at  least,  their  road  was 
blocked.  The  open  gateway  to  Paris  had  been  closed. 

DOWN  THE  OISE  VALLEY 

Following  his  plan  of  scattering  his  blows,  Ludendorff  now  turned  to  a  new 
sector,  and  on  June  9th  attacked  on  a  20-mile  front  between  Noyon  and  Mont- 
didier. This  stroke,  however,  was  comparatively  weak,  and  although  the  Ger- 
mans gained  some  ground,  they  were  brought  to  a  halt  within  three  days 
without  succeeding  in  their  purpose  of  widening  the  Marne  salient. 

AUSTRIA'S  LAST  EFFORT 

Ludendorff  now  called  on  his  ally  to  attempt  a  diversion.  On  June  15th  the 
Austrians  attacked  along  the  entire  line  of  the  Piave  and  in  the  adjoining 
mountain  sector.  They  crossed  the  river  at  several  points  and  for  some  days 
made  progress,  particularly  on  the  Montello  ridge,  but  the  Italians  showed  the 
same  spirit  that  had  stopped  the  enemy  the  fall  before,  and  by  the  25th  the 
Austrians  had  been  driven  back  across  the  river.  The  Italians  followed  up  their 
success  by  clearing  entirely  the  Piave  delta,  thereby  relieving  Venice  from 
bombardment.  This  was  the  least  successful  of  any  of  the  Teutonic  drives  of 
the  year  except  the  one  which  was  immediately  to  follow. 

TURN  OF  THE  TIDE 

The  Germans  were  still  confident.  Only  advanced  forces  had  been  stopped 
about  Chateau  Thierry  in  June,  and  a  position  had  been  gained  from  which 
one  more  lunge  as  successful  as  any  of  the  four  which  had  been  made  since  the 
season  opened  would  certainly  put  Paris  in  German  hands.  The  city  had  been 
intermittently  shelled  since  March  23d  by  a  marvelous  new  gun  located  in  the 
Saint  Gobain  forest,  seventy-six  miles  away,  but  like  most  other  German  sur- 
prises, the  weapon  proved  to  be  more  an  instrument  of  murder  than  of  war. 
From  the  Marne  salient  Paris  could  be  more  effectively  reached  by  long-range 
cannon  and  all  the  area  between  the  front  and  the  capital  could  be  shelled. 
During  the  month  that  he  allowed  his  troops  to  rest,  Ludendorff  accumulated 
an  enormous  amount  of  material  in  the  salient  and  massed  reserves  as  thickly  as 
the  ground  would  permit. 

On  July  15th  the  supreme  effort  began,  not  only  on  the  Marne,  but  also  on 
the  Champagne  sector  between  Reims  and  the  Argonne.  General  Gouraud  in 

33 


the  Champagne  adopted  the  plan  of  withdrawing  his  front  line  at  the  first  attack 
to  prepared  positions  from  which  a  withering  fire  was  opened  on  the  Germans  as 
they  advanced  to  occupy  the  abandoned  ground.  The  attack  here,  which  many 
critics  believed  to  be  the  main  one,  failed  completely. 

About  Chateau  Thierry  the  German  advance  gained  some  ground  at  first. 
Here  the  Third  American  division  was  in  line.  This  was,  however,  a  battle  of 
all  nations,  for,  besides  the  main  body  of  French,  there  were  British  and  Italian 
divisions  between  Chateau  Thierry  and  Reims  and  more  American  contingents 
with  Gouraud.  Three  days  of  desperate  attack  left  the  Germans  virtually  in 
their  old  positions.  This  time  the  Ludendorff  tactics  had  failed. 

And  now  Foch  was  ready  for  a  counter-blow.  Massing  his  reserves  along  the 
west  side  of  the  salient  between  Chateau  Thierry  and  Soissons,  he  delivered  an 
attack  on  the  18th  which  turned  the  tide  of  the  war.  Four  American  divisions — 
the  First,  Second,  Third  and  26th — took  part  in  this  battle,  making  it  the 
first  in  which  American  troops  had  fought  in  the  proportions  of  an  army. 
They  were,  however,  all  brigaded  with  the  French. 

The  success  of  Foch's  attack  on  the  west  side  of  the  salient  compelled  the 
Germans  to  retreat  from  the  Marne  to  the  Ourcq.  Chateau  Thierry  was  re- 
occupied  on  the  21st.  On  the  29th  and  30th  the  French  and  Americans  fought 
another  severe  battle  in  the  region  of  Sergy.  By  August  3d  the  Germans  had 
recrossed  the  Vesle,  leaving  behind  or  blowing  up  a  great  part  of  the  enormous 
store  of  munitions  which  they  had  piled  up  in  the  salient.  The  loss  of  this 
material  probably  affected  them  seriously  for  the  remainder  of  the  war. 

ON  THE  SOMME  AGAIN 

And  now  was  revealed  the  advantage  of  a  unified  command  and  the  greatness  of 
Marshal  Foch  as  a  strategist.  Allowing  the  Germans  no  time  for  recovery,  the 
British  under  General  Rawlinson  and  the  French  under  Debeney  attacked  the  front 
bef  ore  Amiens  on  August  8th.  M  on  tdidier  was  recovered  and  the  advance  swept  for- 
ward for  several  days  until  it  was  halted  temporarily  before  Chaulnes  and  Roye. 

On  the  12th,  Humbert's  French  army  attacked  the  great  massif  south  of 
Lassigny,  which  had  been  lost  a  month  before.  By  the  21st,  Lassigny  had  been 
retaken,  and  the  Germans  were  occupying  their  old  front  between  Lassigny  and 
Noyon.  Meanwhile,  on  the  17th,  the  attack  had  been  extended  east  of  the  Oise 
by  Mangin's  army,  which  was  soon  in  position  to  face  east  and  hammer  against 
the  flank  of  the  German  position  on  the  Aisne  and  the  Chemin  des  Dames.  On 
the  21st  Byng's  British  army  struck  between  Albert  and  Arras,  regaining  in  one 
day  much  of  the  ground  for  which  the  British  had  fought  six  months  the  year 
before.  By  the  29th  the  British  were  again  across  the  Somme  and  the  Germans 
were  in  full  retreat  for  the  Hindenburg  line. 

THE   DROCOURT-QUEANT  SWITCH 

On  September  2d  the  first  great  outwork  of  the  Hindenburg  line  fell  when  the 
British  smashed  through  the  Drocourt-Queant  switch  line,  against  which  they 
had  hammered  in  vain  the  fall  before.  This  was  one  of  the  great  feats  of  the  war. 
These  successes  along  the  Somme  and  the  Oise  and  the  Marne  left  the  Germans 
unable  to  support  the  troops  in  the  Lys  salient.  Mont  Kemmel  and  Bailleul  were 
recovered  and  the  remainder  of  the  salient  was  gradually  eliminated  with  little 
effort.  American  troops  of  the  27th  and  30th  divisions  took  part  in  these  operations. 

SAINT   MIHIEL 

Staggering  under  this  succession  of  reverses,  the  Germans  on  the  12th 
received  another  blow  in  an  unexpected  quarter  when  General  Pershing  with 
an  army,  all  American,  except  a  single  corps  of  French,  attacked  both  sides  of 
the  Saint  Mihiel  salient.  Saint  Mihiel  was  retaken,  the  salient  straightened  out, 
and  the  Americans  found  themselves  before  Metz,  having  taken  16,000  prisoners 
and  443  guns  with  only  7,000  casualties  in  their  own  ranks. 

34 


SERBIANS  TAKE  REVENGE  1 

And  now  the  Bulgarians  were  to  learn  that  they  had  picked  the  wrong  side. 
On  September  14th,  General  Franchet  D'Esperey,  who  had  succeeded  General 
Serrail  in  command  of  the  Macedonian  front,  loosed  the  reorganized  Serbian 
army  in  a  flank  attack  across  supposedly  impracticable  mountains  east  of 
Monastir.  The  Serbians  penetrated  the  Cerna  valley  and  swept  on  to  the 
Vardar.  Part  of  the  Bulgarian  troops,  with  their  supporting  Austrian  con- 
tingent, were  driven  northwest  toward  Albania,  where  the  Italians  and  French 
fell  upon  them.  The  main  Bulgarian  positions  in  the  Vardar  valley  about  Lake 
Doiran  were  attacked,  and  the  British,  French  and  Greek  troops  swept  over 
them.  Only  sixteen  days  after  the  drive  began,  the  Bulgarians  sent  commis- 
sioners to  General  D'Esperey  and  surrendered  at  his  dictation.  The  first  of  the 
four  Central  Powers  was  done  for. 

The  German  and  Austrian  troops  in  Serbia  and  Albania  continued  to  offer  some 
resistance,  but  by  November  3d  Belgrade  and  all  Serbia  had  been  recovered. 

TURKEY'S  TURN  NEXT 

But  the  Macedonian  front  had  become  only  a  sector  of  this  great  Allied  line 
from  the  North  Sea  to  the  Tigris  River.  On  September  20th  General  Allenby 
attacked  the  Turks  north  of  Jerusalem.  Breaking  through  with  his  cavalry 
along  the  coast  he  cut  the  Turkish  communications  at  Nazareth  on  the  22d. 
Those  of  the  Turks  who  did  not  surrender  were  driven  across  the  Jordan  into 
the  desert,  where  they  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Arabs.  Virtually  all  of  their 
material  in  Palestine  was  captured.  Damascus  and  Aleppo  were  occupied 
without  opposition,  and  on  October  31st,  after  seeing  the  surrender  of  what 
was  left  of  her  army  in  Mesopotamia,  Turkey  followed  the  example  of  Bulgaria 
by  throwing  herself  on  the  mercy  of  the  Allies. 

BREAKING  THE  HINDENBURG  LINE 

On  September  27th  the  British  began  the  preliminary  bombardment  of  the 
Hindenburg  line.  Brigaded  with  them  were  two  American  divisions — the  30th, 
from  North  Carolina,  South  Carolina  and  Tennessee,  and  the  27th,  made  up 
of  the  New  York  National  Guard  and  including  the  108th  regiment,  formerly 
the  74th  of  Buffalo.  It  fell  to  the  30th,  with  the  27th  supporting  on  the  left,  to 
be  the  first  to  pierce  the  Hindenburg  line.  Australians  and  British  pressed  the 
attack,  and  by  October  8th  the  entire  German  front  between  Cambrai  and 
Saint  Quentin  had  been  smashed. 

BELGIUM'S  HOUR  OF  TRIUMPH' 

On  September  29th  the  Belgian  army  was  unleashed.  With  British,  French 
and  American  contingents  co-operating,  the  Belgians  quickly  recovered  the 
ground  before  Ypres  which  had  been  abandoned  by  the  British  in  the  spring, 
and  by  October  18th  Ostend,  Zeebrugge  and  Bruges  had  been  recaptured  and 
the  advancing  line  was  before  Ghent. 

These  successes  forced  the  Germans  to  evacuate  the  entire  Lille-Lens  district 
and  to  fall  back  on  Courtrai  and  Valenciennes. 

AMERICANS'  GREATEST  BATTLE 

The  echoes  of  Saint  Mihiel  had  hardly  died  out  before  General  Pershing  again 
attacked  on  a  new  sector.  There  were  now  more  than  2,000,000  American 
troops  in  France  out  of  3,665,000  that  had  been  raised,  and  the  battle  of  the 
Meuse  was  fought  entirely  by  American  forces,  with  no  Allied  contingents, 
though  the  French  co-operated  by  attacking  vigorously  west  of  the  Argonne. 
There  were  twelve  American  divisions  in  line  between*the  Argonne  forest  and 
the  Meuse  River  when  the  attack  began  on  the  morning  of  September  26th, 
with  three  more  in  reserve.  The  German  first  line  was  carried  in  the  opening  rush. 
On  October  4th  a  second  general  attack  was  made  and  by  the  10th,  the  Argonne 
forest  had  been  entirely  cleared.  The  Kreimhilde  line,  on  which  the  Germans  had 

35 


depended  for  their  final  stand  on  this  sector,  was  penetrated  on  the  14th.  On 
November  6th,  the  Americans  had  reached  a  point  on  the  Meuse  opposite  Sedan, 
but  the  honor  of  reentering  that  historic  city  was  fittingly  left  to  the  French. 

The  77th  division,  made  up  of  National  Army  troops  mostly  from  New  York 
and  Buffalo,  had  the  left  of  the  line,  actually  in  the  Argonne  forest,  from  Sep- 
tember 26th  until  after  the  capture  of  Grand  Pre  on  October  15th,  when  the  78th 
division,  also  New  York  troops,  took  position  on  its  left.  The  77th  remained  in 
line  until  the  armistice  on  November  llth. 

Forty  German  divisions  had  been  used  and  used  up  against  2 1  American  divisions, 
many  of  them  composed  of  troops  which  were  entering  battle  for  the  first  time. 

The  Americans  then  turned  eastward,  forced  the  passage  of  the  Meuse  and 
began  an  advance  toward  the  Briey  coal  fields,  but  meanwhile  the  British  had 
taken  Valenciennes,  Tournai  and  Maubeuge  and  the  French  had  made  big 
advances  on  the  Aisne-Champagne  front.  The  Germans  had  had  enough. 

ITALY'S  FINAL  VICTORY 

The  war  was  not  to  end,  however,  without  one  last  success  by  the  Italians. 
On  October  27th  they  crossed  the  Piave  and  shattered  the  Austrian  front.  The 
Austrian  government  frantically  sent  an  appeal  to  President  Wilson,  asking  an 
armistice  and  peace.  Failing  to  receive  an  encouraging  response,  it  sent  com- 
missioners direct  to  General  Diaz.  The  Italians  occupied  Trent,  Rovereto  and 
Trieste  before  they  accepted  the  Austrian  surrender  on  November  3d. 

SUBMISSION 

As  early  as  October  6th  Germany  had  asked  President  Wilson  to  ascertain 
what  peace  terms  might  be  obtained,  but  it  was  not  believed  that  she  seriously 
meant  to  surrender.  Continued  Allied  victories  forced  her  to  repeat  the  over- 
ture. The  breaking  of  the  Kreimhilde  line  and  approach  to  Sedan  threatened 
to  cut  off  entirely  the  retreat  of  her  armies  in  France  and  Belgium.  On  the 
27th  came  a  note  saying  £  hat  Germany  awaited  the  Allies'  terms.  The  Allied 
war  council  on  November  4th,  agreed  on  the  conditions  which  it  would  impose; 
the  Germans  signed,  and  on  November  llth  at  11  A.  M.  the  armistice  went  into 
effect.  The  Kaiser  had  abdicated  two  days  earlier  and  fled  to  Holland.  The 
great  war  was  ended.  German  imperialism  had  been  crushed  forever. 

THE   TERMS 

The  Germans  evacuated  Belgium,  Alsace-Lorraine  and  Luxemburg,  agreed 
to  Allied  occupation  of  the  three  principal  Rhine  crossings  at  Mayence,  Coblenz 
and  Cologne  with  bridgeheads  east  of  the  Rhine  opposite  these  cities,  surren- 
dered the  best  of  their  cannon,  machine  guns,  airplanes  and  a  great  quantity  of 
railroad  and  other  transportation  material  and  turned  over  the  bulk  of  their 
fleet,  including  all  their  submarines. 

"LET  US   HAVE   PEACE" 

The  American  losses  reported  up  to  January  29,  1919,  were  43,697  killed  in 
action,  18,644  by  disease  and  2,602  from  other  causes,  140,878  wounded,  2,163 
prisoners  and  12,82J.  missing. 

The  total  British  casualties  were  3,049,991,  of  whom  658,665  were  killed. 

The  French  had  1,327,800  killed  and  more  than  3,000,000  wounded. 

The  Italians  lost  460,000  killed  and  947,000  wounded. 

The  Russian  casualties  were  roughly  computed  at  9,150,000  men  of  whom 
1,700,000  were  killed. 

The  German  casualties  were  above  6,000,000,  with  2,000,000  killed,  and  the 
total  Austrian  casualties  were  above  4,000,000. 

The  losses  of  the  smaller  states  were  also  enormous. 

The  total  direct  cost  of  the  war  was  estimated  at  above  $200,000,000,000. 

36 


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